SPARTAN 487
by WesUAH
Summary: In the year 2552, three SPARTANs were deployed in support of the effort to kidnap a Covenant High Prophet. This is the story of SPARTAN 487, and what happened during her part of Operation THESPIAN. A Kim Possible:Halo fusion. Language and violence warning
1. Thespian

_A/N: Just a fair warning, dear readers: this first chapter is long on exposition and short on dialogue and action. That'll come next chapter, but for now, I had to do some stage-setting._

_Disclaimer: Kim Possible belongs to Disney, Halo belongs to Bungie Studios and Microsoft. Seriously._

* * *

**Chapter 1 – Thespian**

_2517_

"_I don't like this Catherine, I don't like this one little bit."_

"_You don't have to like it, Jacob. You know it has to be done."_

"_I know, I know... with the Neo-Fascist and Neo-Communist revolts spreading, we'll need as many candidates as we can get. It's just... dammit, Catherine, she's so _small_ compared to the others, not to mention the fact that she's the daughter of two of the greatest scientific minds in history, and the granddaughter of one of the UNSC's legends."_

"_She has the markers, Jacob. Besides, you saw the security feed from that preschool, just the same as I did. You _saw_ the moves she pulled on those kids, and that was on a high-gravity world, and when she was _four_. And if she can do that at four, then after we're finished, and if she survives..._

"_Then she could do anything."_

"_Alright. Just as soon as the flash-clone is ready, we'll bring her up to the ship. I still don't like it, though."_

"_I know. Will we have time to deliver her to Reach before the next stop?"_

"_No need. Eridanus II is on the way. I figure we can pick up the next subject there and then deliver them both..."_

* * *

_2552_

Commander Ron Stoppable strode through the corridors of his ship, the Halcyon-class cruiser _Heart of Sword_, and allowed a satisfied grin to cross his face. Not that a grin was anything new to him, as he still maintained and used the old goofy grin he'd worn during his childhood, but this grin, though, was different. It wasn't silly.

It was _prideful_.

His crew had pulled it off, bless their sorry asses, and the 'dress rehearsal' prior to the final reversion to slipspace had proved it. Of the five ships in Admiral Go's part of Operation THESPIAN, _Sword_ had come out on top in effectiveness ratings against the simulated Covenant forces.

_Simulated_ forces. Computerized facsimiles of the greatest threat mankind had ever known. They were based off of the latest intelligence, and operational experience, that the UNSC had on the Covenant... and even though they'd had a dedicated AI construct running their tactics, a computer program just could never compare to the real thing.

Sill, Ron knew that his crew, and Captain Director, deserved all the praise they could get (Commander Drew Lipsky, the chief engineer on the carrier _Hephaestus_, was still trying to figure out just exactly how they'd made their engines do what they did). The war with the Covenant had lasted for nearly thirty years (Ron himself was 41, and had been 14 when Harvest was glassed), and for a Halcyon cruiser to do that well, even in computer simulation...

Well, that _was_ something.

He even reserved some of the pride he felt for himself. As XO of the _Sword_, his job was, essentially, to keep the ship running, to serve as a sounding board for his CO (now Captain Betty Director, a fellow survivor from Middleton Colony), and more, but mostly his job was to make sure that the crew of his ship were able to perform their duties above and beyond the call.

Their performance in the simulation had proved that, despite his past year spent with the ODST (Orbital Drop Shock Troopers), in his own words, "The Ron-man still had it".

But still, he reserved most of his pride for the crew. They'd performed exceptionally well, and unless the sitch at Thebes went all to hell and back, they would likely come out of it just as well as they had in simulation. He couldn't help _but_ be proud of them.

After all, they were, almost, like the children he'd never had, and likely never would, not after what had happened to-

"Commander Stoppable," said a gruff voice that had walked up behind him and interrupted his reverie.

"Colonel Barkin," Ron replied formally, as the two men fell into step with each other. Steve Barkin had taught Ron and his friends throughout most of high school, and they had long maintained an adversarial, if grudgingly respectful and surprisingly affectionate, relationship.

Barkin was once an enlisted non-com in the UNSC (United Nations Space Command) Marines, but had been released under a medical discharge, and some shadowy but barely avoided 'conduct unbecoming' charges. Shortly after his discharge he'd taken up teaching, having determined that the price of his redemption would be to deal with unruly teenagers on his home colony, and teach them some discipline and character.

Which meant he made Ron's life heck for four years... though Ron came to appreciate what Barkin had tried to teach him five weeks into his first year at the UNSC Naval Academy.

"We've just entered slipspace, I take it?" Barkin continued.

"Yes sir. Three days till we hit Thebes, and then the fun begins."

"Three days," Barkin snorted, but there was an amused twinkle in his eyes. "A Marine's life isn't meant to be cooped up on one of these ships, Commander. We're meant to be on the ground, watering the flowers with Covenant blood."

"Can't argue with that, sir."

"No I guess you can't... Stoppable," Barkin said quietly.

Ron nodded. Barkin's use of his last name wasn't something that the much older (but still capable) Colonel would have ever dared to do in front of his Marines, on in front of any of the Navy crew... except for maybe Captain Director. Calling Ron by his last name, as he had back in when Ron was his student in high school, was his way of acknowledging the bond of respect and loss that existed between them.

It existed between all of those who had lost their homes and loved ones to the Covenant, but especially when they were fellow TriCos, those who had survived the destruction of the TriColony system simply by virtue of having _not been there when it happened_.

"In any case," Barkin continued, his tone lighter, "at least we'll have some decent food to eat. Best chow I've ever had on a Navy ship."

"You can thank Billy Caldwell for that one, sir," Ron said with a genuine grin.

"I see. And can I also thank Ship's Cook Caldwell for that... interesting spice combination in last night's sauce, Commander? I seem to remember only tasting that particular concoction one time before, and that sauce came from a particular student in my Home Ec class."

Ron turned red. He'd wound up running the school cafeteria after that...

"I, um, _might_ be working with the cooks a bit, ah, after hours," Ron said with an abashed grin.

"And teaching others your tricks? Bad tactics, Stoppable," Barkin admonished.

They shared a chuckle, and then their shared path brought them to a fork in the corridor. Marine Land was one way, Navy Land the other, and so they both came to a brief stop.

"Getting some sack time, Commander?"

"Yes, sir. Had a long day, supervising the transfer of the SPARTAN from Admiral Go's flagship. Figured I could use some time to marinate."

Barkin snorted again. Unlike some of the survivors, Ron had never really stopped using his own version of Middleton Colony slang, even if he had mostly switched to standard human vernacular. Each world of the TriColony System had it's own variant, and Ron, consistent with his 'never be normal' outlook, had taken it upon himself to invent his own.

"Sure. Speaking of the SPARTAN..."

Ron waved a hand.

"She'll be ready, Colonel, don't you worry about that. They say these guys can do anything, SPARTAN-487 especially."

"You sure about that, Commander?" Barkin asked dubiously. "I don't really trust some of these 'modifications' they did in the program. Figured if anyone would agree with that, it would be you."

Ron raised his hands in warding gesture.

"Colonel, I never did buy into the ODSTs whole "We are God's Gift to warfare, and all the rest of you suck" thing. All I know is that the SPARTANs kill Covenant. That's good enough for me."

* * *

_All I know is that the SPARTANs kill Covenant. That's good enough for me._

Ron shut the door to his quarters and leaned against it. He closed his eyes and let out an involuntary sigh and shudder as he tried to contemplate what had led the happy-go-lucky kid he'd once been to make that statement.

Briefly, he wondered what Rabbi Katz would have to say about it... but that didn't matter.

Because Rabbi Katz was dead. Just like his parents. Just like Monique, and Felix, and the Possibles...

But it hadn't started with them.

He figured it had all started when he was six, when his then-best-friend, Kim Possible, had suffered a freak brain injury, and then died of Metabolic Cascade Failure.

* * *

_Their families, the Possibles and Stoppables, had come to the TriColony System in the year 2410, along with the first wave of colonists. In fact, Jon Stoppable and Mim Possible, the ancestors of Kim and Ron, were two of the first people to step off the colony ship... right behind Misters McCorkle and Schooley, the financers and planners of the expedition, and Mister Loter, the commander of the ship itself._

_Oddly enough, their families weren't all that close; Jon and Mim had been, but a freak incident had broken apart that friendship, and the Possibles and Stoppables all went their separate ways._

_Until Kim and Ron came along._

_They had met at age four, while in preschool, when a group of bullies had started to pick on Kim. Ron, his child's sense of justice kicking in, had stepped in to try and get the bullies to quit._

_Instead, they'd turned their attention to him. Kim's own sense of justice had kicked in at that point; she'd jumped high into the air (no small feat, on a world whose gravity was 1.27 times that of Earth's), and had delivered a world-class beating to the bullies._

_Thusly was their friendship sealed._

* * *

Ron smirked at the memory, of how they'd awkwardly started up a game of kickball there on the playground. Then he shook his head, walked over to his locker, and withdrew one of the few items he'd managed to save from Middleton Colony.

It was a small holo-album. He pressed the control stud, and the first hologram sprang up. It was an image, three-dimensional and incredibly detailed, of a six years old girl, one with flaming red hair and bright, lively green eyes.

* * *

_She'd been very shy, at first, and so had he, but after just a few hours they wound up practically inseparable. His friendship awoke something in her; they shy girl, within the space of three months, became the single most driven and lively preschooler anyone had ever seen. _

_They got into _everything

_Often they would cause trouble... and every now and then, they would get other kids out of trouble. They even rescued a few cats, or other pets, out of the native plant life that served for trees._

_Of course, his role was often one of distracting the bullies, or other problems that might need distracting, while Kim (who had obtained a black belt in three different forms of martial arts by the time she was five), dealt with them in her own particular way._

_They were best friends, he was her sidekick, and young Ron Stoppable was the happiest little boy in the galaxy._

_Then she was dead._

_Two weeks earlier she'd proclaimed that everyone within three-hundred light years would someday hear their names. She'd foreseen a bright future ahead, one with just the two of them, side by side, helping everyone who needed it._

_Then one day he'd been sick. A Middleton-native cold bug had gotten through the Stoppable Fortress of Immunity, and had laid him out on a couch for a week. She would bring him his homework, since she was trying very hard to ward off what she saw as an approaching slacker attitude, but one day she never showed up._

_They found her a short while later, collapsed along the side of the route from the school to Ron's house._

_They never really determined what it was that had struck her down; it was as if she had simply forgotten how to use her own muscles, and all that her mother (the second-best brain surgeon in the galaxy; the first best was out of contact, which meant that he was on a special assignment for ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence)) could guess was some sort of indeterminate neurological trauma._

_Not that it mattered. Her nervous system began to shred itself two days later, and Ron was by her side when Kim gave him a pained look and breathed her last._

* * *

He ran a finger across the holo and smiled wistfully. Thirty-five years did a lot to take the edge off of an old sting, but even so... he still felt it. God only knew why, given how long it had been, but he knew, somehow, that some sort of connection had been forged between them, and that it had been cut off well before it's time.

He smiled again and switched to the next holo... he knew he wasn't really marinating, not in looking at _these_ pictures, not of Kim, or of _her_... but then again, he hadn't really marinated in twenty-nine years.

Not after what had happened to the dark-skinned beauty whose picture he was looking at.

* * *

_He'd moped around for several days after Kim's death, nearly as despondent as her parents and brothers had been. Until three days after the funeral, when he had an epiphany._

_Moping around was not what Kim would have wanted. Her name was lost, but he could see to it that he made own as best he could._

_He vowed, right then and there, that would never, ever, slack off. That he would always do the very best he could._

_For Kim._

_It was a child's vow, a child's oath. Simple and bereft of fancy speeches or Shakespearian drama._

_Just like a child's sense of justice._

_Beautiful._

_He studied, he did his homework. He applied himself, and started taking karate lessons on his own right (Kim would simply drag him along to hers earlier). He did it all in Kim's name._

_Then he reached third grade, and had another epiphany._

_He was _excelling_, at everything he did. He _liked_ excelling._

_Then he began study and work all the harder, now for himself as much as for the memory of his dead friend._

_Even so, he was never popular. He _was_ still Ron, after all; silly, goofy, possessed of his own way of looking at things. He had odd tastes in food (ancient Tex-Mex), and in entertainment (the Galactic Wrestling Association, or GWA, as well as old-school baseball). Most knew him; few hung out with him. Most would laugh at his silly jokes and antics; few would ask how his day went._

_He just took it all in stride and carried on._

"_I am what I is," he would often say to people who decreed that he would be more popular if he would stop being so... weird._

_Kim had accepted his weirdness, she'd even _liked_ his weirdness, and he saw no reason why he should be friends with someone who didn't do likewise._

_The hard part, of course, was in finding someone who _did_ do likewise._

_That search ended his freshman year._

_He'd won, through a fairly ridiculous event involving an interplanetary businessman and a shopping mall (as well as the natural disorientation Middleton's higher gravity caused to off-worlders), a pair of tickets to a local GWA match (Pain King and Steel Toe both loved fighting on high-g worlds, as they felt it helped fuel their mystique). As was his wont, he advertised via posters and adds in the newspaper 'A Night With The Ron-man'. No one took him up on it._

_Until Monique Robinson, the new girl on-planet, took a gamble and accepted the ticket. She was a big fan of the GWA herself, and decided that an evening with 'The Ron-man' would be worth a good show. Besides, he couldn't be as bad as Rockwaller made him out to be._

_Sparks didn't exactly fly... but they would up as fast friends._

_Their similar tastes in food (Tex-Mex, specifically the long-lasting Bueno Nacho), and their fanaticism with the GWA, gave them just enough common ground to build a foundation... and their found enough differences in each other to keep themselves interested._

_It had all just sort of built from there, even with the undercurrent of tension caused by the fall of Harvest, and the newly-begun war with the Covenant._

_They were quite a pair, and then became a trio when they were joined by Felix Renton, another off-worlder whose wheel-chair allowed him to cope with the higher gravity better than most. They formed a tight friendship, a full-fledged posse... even if there was always something stronger between Ron and Monique than there was between them and Felix._

* * *

Ron smiled again as he flipped through a few more pictures of Monique. Some were from school events, some were from random dates, some were from Prom... and then there were the ones that were most definitely for his eyes _only_. She'd sent them to him while he was away at the Academy, and he made absolutely sure that neither his roommate, nor the Academy staff, _ever_ got wind of their existence.

Not that he would have been kicked out, as they weren't quite up to the soft-core level, but... it just wouldn't _do_ for his fellow cadets to see his girlfriend at that... level of dress.

Or lack thereof.

Then he sighed, a longing, incredibly sad sound, as he realized that no one, not even him, would ever see her that way again.

Save in pictures.

Then he came to the shot of his graduating class.

* * *

_High school came, and high school went... and along came the time when all good students began to think of their next step in life. Many went out and joined the Marines, or the Navy, to help in the fight against the Covenant. Felix and Monique intended to go to college, one to Upperton Colony, the other to Lowerton Colony._

_As for Ron..._

_The magic of high gravity had worked it's way on him, as a combination of natural adaptation and and a fairly regimented planet-wide childhood nutrition and health program. He was a full six feet tall, short for a native-born Middleton'r, yet considerably tall for his family lineage. His strength and musculature was that of one who was used to living and moving in a 'high'-gravity environment._

_That being said, a _lot_ of people were looking at him due to his physical capabilities and accomplishments (expert to master rankings in karate, five forms of kung fu, coup de vitasse, and in fencing)._

_Especially the military._

_He'd considered it for a long while, and quietly went through the proper channels and interviews... and by the time graduation rolled around, he announced to his family and friends that he had been accepted at the UNSC Naval Academy, and that his ranking in his class's tenth percentile had netted him a spot at the Academy's prestigious Annapolis campus._

_On Earth._

* * *

_'Why did I do that?'_ Ron thought to himself, not for the first time. With his grades he could have gotten into any college he wanted, and could have lived the happy and relatively stress-free life of a civilian... at least, until the Covenant reached Middleton.

But he knew why.

Every time he even considered dodging the fight, the vow and ambition of a five year-old girl would rush through his head.

That combined with the news of another battle _here_, another colony glassed _there_... and it just seemed the natural place for him to go. He was intelligent, motivated, and he was certainly strong enough.

But all in all, he knew the answer: it was what Kim would have done, and somehow he just couldn't seem to escape the shadow of his first friend... nor his own sense of justice.

"We had a long talk about that, didn't we?" he whispered to himself as he flipped back to a picture of Monique. "I'm still amazed that you accepted it, Mon. Shoot, I'm still amazed that you stayed with me when I was on Earth. A lot of guys there got Dear John'd, but you... you kept with me, babe.

"I loved you. But you knew that."

* * *

_Life at the Academy had been hard, enough so that he wanted to quit so many times... but he always pulled through, somehow or another, and finally he graduated, this time well within the upper quarter of his class._

_Even Barkin, himself only recently reactivated (this time as an officer), came to the ceremony._

_After the pomp and circumstance was over, the newly minted ensigns (and 2nd Lieutenants) were mingling with family and friends... and right there in front of everybody, his family, her family, Felix, Steve Barkin, the Possibles (who had kept up with him, even after Kim's death), the rest of the graduates, several of the younger cadets, and a large portion of the UNSC officer corps, Ron Stoppable got down on one knee and presented Monique with a diamond ring._

_Heaven only knows where he got it._

_She said yes._

_They set a date: just as soon as he came home after his first cruise, or about two years from that day. In the meantime Monique would stay on Middleton Colony, and start work._

_Two weeks into his first cruise, the Covenant glassed Middleton, Upperton, and Lowerton. There were no survivors._

* * *

There weren't many pictures, after that, since while Ron Stoppable tried to be a friend to his fellow officers, and a father figure to his enlisted men... he was always a distant one. He'd help his junior officers, and laugh at their jokes... but he wouldn't join them on poker night. A similar distance was kept with the enlisted men, but that was due to the fraternization protocols more so than anything else.

But he knew, deep down, that the protocols were only an excuse. To do his job right, he'd have to care... but he never let himself care too much.

He stopped at a picture of himself and Monique, both of them smiling widely, with Mon holding up her engagement ring, it's diamond glittering in the morning light.

A bright future. So much promise.

Gone. Because the Covenant had decided, for some damned-by-God reason, that humanity needed to wiped from the face of the galaxy.

Which was why he didn't care what ONI had done to make the SPARTANs.

They killed Covenant. That was good enough for him.

With that thought in mind he shut down the holo-album, replaced in it his locker, stripped down, and went to sleep.

* * *

The UNSC wasn't exactly on the brink of defeat, but they certainly weren't winning the war, either. In the year 2552, High Command hatched a last-ditch, almost desperate plan. They would detail thirty of the SPARTANs, led by SPARTAN-117, to the task of capturing a Covenant High Prophet, who they wished to use to barter a truce.

Alongside this top secret operation came Operation THESPIAN.

The goal of THESPIAN was simple: the three SPARTANs that were not assigned to the abduction would instead be sent out to various Covenant planetary facilities, along with a sizable Marine and Naval accompaniment. They would attack the bases, and hopefully cause enough confusion and reaction amongst the Covenant High Council that the way to one of the High Prophets would be left open.

At the very least they could draw attention away from the _Pillar of Autumn _and the other ships that were gathering at Reach.

One of the three was SPARTAN-487. A female SPARTAN, she was shorter than most of her counterparts, only reaching a height of six feet. However, she was deceptively strong, especially with her custom MJOLNIR Mark V.2 armor, and was known to engage Elites in hand-to-hand combat with her fists and feet, in lieu of firearms.

Her target was a Covenant base on the planet known as Thebes.

Alongside her traveled a full Marine regiment, the 24th (nicknamed the Mad Dogs), under Colonel Barkin's command. They were spaced across two Halcyon-class cruisers, the _Heart of Sword _and _Moonlit Lotus_. Fighter escort and overall squadron command was provided by Admiral Sheila Go on the carrier _Hephaestus_, while fleet escort was provided by the destroyers _Hazlet_ and _Pender_.

For her part, SPARTAN-487 waited out the three-day journey in cryosleep, her grassy eyes hidden behind a golden visor...

* * *

They had a traitor.

This traitor was one of the few humans who had not died upon a Covenant world-glassing. No, at this world, they had taken prisoners. Those who did not break were either killed or dispersed throughout their empire.

This one broke, and in that breaking, the traitor became convinced of the Glory of the Great Journey, and became dedicated to it's completion.

The traitor returned to human space, made up a story of what had happened, and managed to be reinserted into human society... and later joined the Navy. The traitor learned many things... about the SPARTANs, their mission, and about Operation THESPIAN.

The traitor did not, thankfully, learn the location of Earth. But what was known was enough for the traitor to cause plenty of damage, even if the homeworld was secure.

And now the traitor waited in the squadron, until the will of the High Prophets could be performed...

* * *

_Three days later_.

Ron was making his way back to the bridge when, once again, he ran into Steve Barkin. He'd seemed to be doing that a lot lately.

It was like high school all over again.

They would be dropping back to realspace shortly, and Ron needed to be on the bridge for the procedure. Barkin, he figured, was heading for the flight deck, where he would load his Marines aboard their Pelican landing craft and and give the Covenant a nice big "Hoo-ah", courtesy of the UNSC Marine Corps.

"Commander," Barkin said in greeting.

"Colonel. Big day today."

Whatever Colonel Barkin might have said in reply was preempted by the shudder that rolled through the decks of the _Heart of Sword_. Ron and Barkin both knew that shudder well, for it was the shake and groan of a ship reverting back to realspace.

That wasn't right. They weren't supposed to drop out for another two mi-

Then he felt another shudder rock the ship, and then another, and then another... and he knew all to well what was causing _those_.

Plasma cannons.

_'We're under attack.'_

The ship shook yet again, harder this time, and Ron and Barkin were thrown against the walls. They traded a look, confirming each other reading of the sitch, and then set off in opposite directions: Ron towards the bridge, and Barkin towards the flight deck.

"Stoppable!" Barkin called out after a moment. Ron turned back to look at him.

"Watch your ass, son," the older man said grimly. Ron just nodded... but then he grinned.

"You do the same, Mr. B. Give 'em hell."

Barkin nodded.

"For the TriCos," Barkin said softly, and then he took off back towards the flight deck.

"For the TriCos," Ron whispered in reply, and then he turned back towards the bridge, as the ship shook again.

He started running.

**END CHAPTER ONE**


	2. Ephialtes

_A/N: Many thanks to Ezbok58a and parareru for their invaluable assistance in educating me on the capabilities of Covenant and UNSC warships. Of course, I also reserve the right to make stuff up, as I have (somewhat) done in this chapter._

_Again, Kim Possible belongs to Disney, and Halo belongs to Bungie._

* * *

**Chapter 2 – Ephialtes**

Admiral Sheila Go was something of an anomaly in the UNSC. While, like most of the other career officers, she had attended the UNSC Naval Academy (wherein she'd been given the nickname 'Shego' by her peers), her career post-graduation had not exactly been stellar.

Actually, it barely lasted two years, before then-Lieutenant (full grade) Sheila Go had gone AWOL while in port somewhere on the Outer Rim, with the intent of going pirate.

If anyone ever asked her why, she said it was because of the food.

She'd had a _very_ successful pirate career over the years, and even wound up in command of her own little fleet of highly modified merchantmen. Her pirate days has lasted even into the Covenant War; although she'd heard about them, and knew the rumors and tales, she'd never really believed that they were as bad as all _that_. She'd come to believe that the internal threats the UNSC had fought against had been little more than fear-mongering to keep the colonies in line, and nothing that she'd heard had give her any reason to believe differently about the Covenant.

Until five years ago, when she dropped out of slipspace on a raid against the Ithica system... and found herself smack dab in the middle of a Covenant glassing.

There were five ships in high orbit, slowly and surely bombarding Ithica's chilly green surface (it was a cold planet, similar to her own birthplace of GoWorld), and a panicked line of civilian ships streaming away from the dying world. She could _hear_ their grief-stricken, panicked cries over the open comm channels; she heard captains inquiring about sister ships, or asking for information on parents of children, or children of parents; she heard anguished cries and prayers in the background, as desperate refugees clung to whatever they had left and mourned the loss of all they'd struggled to build.

She heard the _screams_ as a single Covenant vessel tore apart one of the fleeing ships... and then something had come back to life in Shego.

She gave one last order, and then she had flung her entire pirate fleet towards the refugee ships...

... right _past_ the refugee ships...

... and stood them firm between the desperate vessels and the Covenant battlecruiser.

Fittingly, she'd named her flagship the _Thunder Child_.

She had twenty refitted merchantmen, with meant that there were nearly a thousand missile tubes, two thousand fifty-mike-mike autocannons, and a pair of decidedly after-market Magnetic Accelerator Cannons (MACs) at her disposal.

God help them all, she'd actually gotten the kill, and all of the remaining refugee ships made it into slipspace.

Only three of her vessels followed them... and of those, only two came out again. She never found out what had happened to the third vessel; all she knew was that it had made the jump... and then had never reverted. Still, the amount of damage it had taken in the battle let her make a pretty good guess...

Either way, she had surrendered herself to UNSC forces upon reversion. Shego had spent a full five days in some random destroyer's brig, while the unit commander had proceeded to 'investigate the situation', which, she concluded, more than likely meant that they were tracking down where exactly she'd learned how to command and handle a starship, at which point the UNSC would likely keel-haul her shapely self for treason and desertion.

Her surprise can be imagined, then, when she was instead invited to a conference with a full admiral.

He'd spared no time for pleasantries, and had been admirably blunt and to the point. He would just have soon have put a bullet in her pretty little head for Desertion, Piracy, and Being a Pain in the Butt During a Time of War, but the UNSC high command, after taking into account testimony from the refugee convoy as well as the information from her ship's own data tapes... was offering to forgive her prior transgressions _and_ recommission her.

As a full Captain, not as a Lieutenant.

"_Why?"_ she'd asked.

"_Because we need you,"_ he'd replied simply. _"We're not at the point of desperation in this war... not yet, at any rate. But we are damn close, and if one thing is for certain, we're going to need some good ship captains and squadron commanders. I don't like it... but you're good in a fight, Ms. Go, and you've shown yourself capable of handling ships and leading men. So... what's your answer?"_

She'd said yes.

In times like these, as her ship dropped out of slipspace well ahead of schedule and a quintet of Covenant battlecruisers moved towards weapons range, Admiral Sheila Go wondered just why exactly she _had_ said yes.

But she knew why, just as she knew why she'd immolated her fleet to protect those fleeing civilians all those years ago.

She cared.

She'd always tried not to, and to always proclaim that her and hers was all that mattered... but the simple truth was, despite it all, Sheila Go actually gave a damn about the people around her.

Not that she would tell anyone that; her _official_ reason was that she couldn't stand the thought of Humanity being wiped out by an organization whose warships resembled giant purple – no, _fuchsia –_ ducks.

Really, really, freakin' _deadly_ fuchsia ducks, seven of which were closing down on her squadron... which meant that this mission was well and truly _scrubbed_.

"Joyeuse," she ordered the ship's AI, "get me a random slipspace vector, and pass it to helm and the other ships. Helm, as soon you get the vector-"

"Uh, Ma'am," the helmsman interrupted nervously. "I, um, I don't have slipspace control."

"I beg your pardon?"

The helmsman just waved his hands in confusion.

"It's like the operating software for the drive has been... deleted, Ma'am. The firmware too. I'm sorry, I don't know what's happened."

"_Snap_," she whispered, and then she smashed a button on her communications panel.

"Drew, what just happened?" Admiral Go growled through the intercom. She was rather nonplussed, given the current fact that all five of her ships had suddenly dropped out of slipspace early, had a rather nauseating view of seven Covenant battleships lying in wait, and couldn't even jump out to safety.

So much for Article 4 of the Cole Protocol.

Her first act was to sound battle stations; not that it was really necessary, as they had been at battle stations for the past twenty-four hours, save sack time. Her crew was as rested and as ready as they would ever be.

Her second act was to watch as the _Moonlit Lotus_ blew apart under concentrated plasma fire.

"Commander Lipsky," she called again, now _really_ annoyed. "Please respond!"

He didn't.

* * *

"XO on deck," the Chief of the Watch announced as Ron arrived on the bridge.

Betty Director turned and gave him a tight smile.

"Welcome back, Ron," she said dryly. "Guess I was wrong about that luck of your's..."

Ron snorted. For some unfathomable reason, Captain Director had managed to convince herself that her XO had some sort of lucky aura covering his every action, something that she referred to as 'The Ron Factor'. Ron, though flattered, thought that the whole thing was bogus.

"Still going on about that, Captain?" he said with a fake groan. "Anyway, what's the sitch?"

"Oh, the usual. Jumped out of slipspace too early, a group of Covenant ships are right on our 12 o'clock... oh, and did I mention that we can't jump _back_ into slipspace?"

"We can't _what_?"

"Wade's checking it, but-"

She was interrupted by a silent, brilliant flash as the _Moonlit Lotus_ exploded. Several people flinched away from the temporary sun, and more than one member of the bridge crew let out a cry of dismay.

"-countermeasures up _now_!" Director barked out.

"Aye, Ma'am," the weapons officer, Lieutenant J.G. Carlos DeLong, replied. "ECAP and NMI round loaded. Longsword fighters are deployed and engaging the enemy Seraphs. I'm just waiting for targets, ma'am."

"Well done, Guns."

"Nobody sending anything your way, Carlos?" Ron added with a grin.

"No sir. We're getting lucky, though, since the enemy seems willing to concentrate most of their fire on _Hephaestus_. But if the performance of Admiral Go's countermeasures are any indication..."

He broke off with a shrug.

"We just might have a chance, sir."

Ron, and then he turned to see the reflective look in his Captain's eyes.

"On _Hephaestus_..." Director repeated thoughtfully. Then she jerked her head in a crisp, forceful nod.

"Wade!" she called out, and the ship's AI sprang it's holographic simulacrum to life. He had the appearance of a ten year old boy, somewhat short, and just a bit round in the middle, as if he spent way too much time in his room.

"Don't worry, I've already done the data wipes," the AI reported. "What's up?"

"Nobody's shooting at us yet, right?" Captain Director asked with a strange grin.

"Yeah..."

"Wade, I want you plot me a course, running straight between the starboard-most pair of Covenant ships, one that'll take us from here to drop range of Thebes. Once plotted, send it to the Helm and then send my intentions to Admiral Go. We're going to give the Covenant a little present..."

* * *

Sheila Go looked at the dispatch that she held from Betty Director. What her senior captain was proposing was... was _ludicrous_. It was stupid, it was idiotic, it flew in the face of all their establish tactical doctrine...

But it was gutsy. By Perdition's left-most flame spigot, it was gutsy.

Sheila Go _liked _gutsy.

She passed the dispatch to her flag captain, _Hephaestus's_ true commander and her tactical exec, with a wry smile. He stared at it for one second and then raised his eyebrows.

"She's _got _to be joking."

"Nah, I don't think she is," Admiral Go replied with a grin. "Betty's one of those Middleton'rs, and they're a crazy lot... Comm, tell Captain Director to get on it... and Godspeed."

* * *

"Engineering, light off the bottle. Helm, max acceleration _now_," Director ordered just as soon as she'd gotten authorization from Admiral Go. It would be tight, but if she gunned it...

Betty Director had been on the front lines, in one form or another, since very early in the war. Due to a tendency to hop between ONI and Fleet assignments she'd never managed to rise to a flag rank. That was perfectly fine with her, of course, as she greatly enjoyed the relative autonomy the Captaincy of a ship gave her.

She also enjoyed reading Sun-Tzu, and reviewing data tapes of old engagements with Covenant forces. She felt she had a pretty good feel for how the Covenant would react to any kind of tactical provocation, and if there was one thing she _did_ know for sure, it was the reaction time of any particular Grunt in a plasma turret. They took _just so_ an amount of time to turn and fire, especially if their attention was elsewhere, and especially if they were facing a fast moving target.

And _Heart of Sword_, despite her mass and grand old age, could become a _very_ fast moving target indeed.

She'd spent the past three months in space dock, with her stern torn open and a bunch of yard dogs pouring over her vitals. They'd suffered a mild power plant failure after their last jump, and the Chief Engineer had determined that they would need to rip out and replace the whole thing. Of course, the space dock didn't exactly have an engine/power-plant suite for a Halcyon-class vessel just lying on hand.

What they did have was something intended for a _much_ larger and newer class of ship. That particular power-plant was destined for a shipyard three month's journey away, from their own; however, that shipyard, coincidentally, had just been turned into molten slag by a Covenant raider group that had gotten _very_ lucky.

_Sword's_ Chief Engineer, Lieutenant Commander Alexsandr Beregovoy, got together with the yard dogs, looked over the technical specs and logistics tables, and came up with a Bright Idea. Out of that Bright Idea came a Halcyon-class vessel that held an engine/power-plant suite fit for a _dreadnaught_.

It had actually been a proposal by the yard dogs, and Beregovoy had been dubious at first. Then they'd shown him the thrust/power profiles, and the new acceleration curves... and then his eyes had taken on a faraway, glassy look, his face melted in a silly grin, and he'd begun muttering Russian prayers of thanks to Saints Patrick, von Braun, and Hickam.

DeLong had had a similar reaction when he saw the new MAC recharge times.

He muttered similar prayers, this time ones of supplication, as he responded to his Captain's orders and pushed the engines to full. He was nervous, since they'd only gone to full power once before, and he still didn't have a good handle on what would happen...

But he was also excited as all get out.

Once, on his homeworld, young Beregovoy had cobbled together a replica '67 Chevy Impala, a replica late-20th-Century-solid-fueled JATO bottle, and a dumb AI to handle the steering. His little experiment in rocket propulsion had left a medium-sized dimple in the face of a mountain, and had netted him two months of community service, and the attention of the UNSC.

So he was nervous. But lighting off a set of dreadnaught engines that were mounted on a Halcyon beat a JATO bottle any day.

* * *

A UNSC vessel could not, under normal circumstances, hope to out-maneuver a Covenant warship. The enemy simply had better rates of turn, along all three axes, along with a better field of fire. To wit, a Covenant vessel traveling either parallel to a UNSC vessel, or at least on a direction that would require a ninety-degree turn or less, would overtake the UNSC vessel every single time.

However, if UNSC vessel were to travel on a course parallel to the Covenant vessel, but in the _opposite direction_, that would be another story. The ship would get shot all to hell and back on the approach and pass-by, but if it could survive that...

While the Covenant had gravity control technology, they had not yet been able to override the effects of momentum. Cut the power to a Covenant ship's engines, and she'll only stop _accelerating_, not moving. In fact, the ship will continue to coast along her original vector, at the last speed she'd attained. To turn, he'd have to reorient, kill his original velocity vector, and then start accelerating from scratch.

A turn under power changes direction considerably faster, as demonstrated by the Keyes Loop, but it still takes time.

Time in which the other ship continues to accelerate. Time in which the other ship increases the velocity gap. Time in which the other ship moves away.

At least, that was Captain Director's plan. The physics involved were similar to those of three cars passing each other at conceptually insane speeds, but she was certain her helmsman, along with Wade, could handle it.

Not that she planned to leave everything up to Sir Isaac Newton, of course. She did have her special present, after all, and if that worked, pursuit would not be an issue.

_Sword's_ flanker, the destroyer _Pender_, would provide a distraction by engaging the two target ships. _Hephaestus_ and _Hazlet_ would engage the other five ships, the idea being that the Covenant would be disposed towards firing at the ships that were firing at them, and not at the one that was just recklessly driving forward.

So far, it seemed to be working.

"Bottle bottle bottle!" the tac officer called out. "I have a magnetic bottle forming off of contact Charlie-6!"

"Orientation!" Ron called out.

"Right at _us_, sir!"

"So much for that," Ron muttered. "Wade, give me a view on the holo..."

"Guns," Betty said calmly, "you may engage at will."

"Aye, ma'am."

Wade manipulated the tactical holo to show a close-up view of Charlie-6. The ship's primary weapon was glowing an infernal red, like the eye of some sort of Hadesian cyclops. As they watched a white-hot, roughly oblong glob of plasma formed at the edge of the launcher, and then that glob flew away from the Covenant ship, and towards the _Heart of Sword_.

"Wade, project course of plasma torpedo," Betty ordered. A blood-red track appeared on the holo, tracing the torpedo's route from the gun to a point three-quarters of the way back from _Sword's_ bow.

"Y'know," Ron said dryly, "I think they're getting better at this."

"Not really," Wade remarked. "If they were getting better, then they'd aim at something _besides_ the generator."

"That's our vulnerable spot."

"I know. Which means I programed the tracking AI to cover all approach vectors towards that section _first_. I swear, these guys have no imagination whatsoever."

Betty smiled thinly at the exchange between her exec and AI, and then she turned to her _human_ gunner.

"Guns? How's it coming?"

"See for yourself, ma'am," Carlos said with a broad grin, and he motioned for his captain to take a look at his weapons display.

* * *

Covenant weapons use a form of matter known as plasma. A plasma , in general terms, is an ionized gas. In more specific terms, a plasma is defined as a collection of electrically conductive charged particles that respond collectively to electromagnetic forces. Plasmas can run a the whole range of temperatures, though the ones used in Covenant weapon systems tends towards the higher ranges, and the ones used in the space-based weapons reach those typically found in stars.

The plasma shot itself is contained in a magnetic bottle; the bottle is steered, and sustained, by three magnetic beams. One connects to the 'back' end of the bottle, and provides the thrust as well as sustainment. The other two magnetic beams take advantage of the magnetic bottle's polarity to 'push' or 'pull' the bottle, and thus the plasma, in any given direction.

That pushing and pulling was what gave the plasma torpedoes, and the shots from Covenant infantry weapons, their homing capacity.

While the UNSC hadn't yet figured out how to generate a unidirectional magnetic beam, they _had _figured out a somewhat crude approximation, and THESPIAN was to be the first operational test of that new system, the NMI, along with a new defensive round, the ECAP.

The ECAP (Enhanced Counter-Arms Projectile) system was based off of an old twenty-first century design for a guidance and control system that could be installed on a forty millimeter bullet and then be used to shoot down a mortar shell. An enterprising junior R&D engineer had found the design while searching through some old AIAA archives, updated it for vacuum and for the fifty millimeter round used in an UNSC vessel's autocannons, and actually managed to get a senior engineer to take a look at his idea.

What they wound up with was a fifty millimeter bullet that could translate and rotate along both the x and y axes. Computer simulations not only showed a marked increase in accuracy against Covenant weapons (and fighters), but an even more pronounced increase in maximum engagement range.

The NMI (Navigable Magnetic Interceptor) was an even more experimental variant of the ECAP. The regular ECAP was equipped with a small explosive that would 'flower' the round at the last moment, increasing the engageable surface area and allowing the round to absorb more energy from an intercepted plasma shot.

The NMI, on the other hand, carried a micro-sized superconductor, one which generated a very powerful, polarized, magnetic field. The rounds would be fire in two groups, one with 'north' polarity, and the other with 'south' polarity. Individually, these rounds would not be enough to override the Covenant guidance beams; however, with the shear volume that the autocannons could fling out over any given vector, they would, in theory, be able to drag a plasma torpedo about. With any luck said torpedo wouldn't be able to maneuver tight enough to hit its target, and if it tried, then it would loose sustainment lock and the torpedo would disintegrate.

Or the ECAP round would strike and destroy the redirected torpedoes.

Which was exactly what happened.

It was crude, inefficient, and downright inelegant. But, by Thor, it had kept _Hephaestus_, _Hazlet_, and _Pender_ alive, and was keeping _Heart of Sword_ quite unmolested.

The NMI rounds drew away the torpedoes, while the ECAP rounds tore them apart and intercepted all the other junk the Covenant could throw at _Heart of Sword_.

Until the cruiser reached point-blank range. Then more and more got through as Wade, Carlos, and the subordinate 'dumb' AIs were nearly overwhelmed. They were forced to prioritize their targets and shifted the majority of their fire to the plasma torpedoes. Here and there cannon shots and pulse lasers would get through, and the _Sword_ was wounded in several places.

But she was a Halcyon, built to take a beating and keep herself running.

So they closed, missiles blazing away and impacting against the Covenant shields. The ship reverberated with the clamor of battle, and she shook in the burning pain of repeated hits.

They closed to fifty kilometers. A Longsword destroyed a Seraph that had attempted a suicide run; the _Pender_ got a MAC shot in on Charlie-7.

Ten kilometers. Smoke on the bridge. Damage alarms. Ron fielded damage control teams from his bridge station, knowing that he'd have to go into the ship itself to fully coordinate, and knowing that he couldn't leave the bridge until they'd finished.

One kilometer. Then bare meters.

And then the Halcyon-class cruiser _Heart of Sword_ drove headlong between a pair of Covenant warships.

The gunners on the Covenant ships tried to fire broadside at the _Sword_, but the closing velocities were too great, and most of their shots passed _behind_ the ship to impact on their fellow's own shields.

It would take them twenty seconds to cross the space between the vessels, and for ten of those seconds, the _Sword's_ bridge was quiet and tense.

"Helm, cut thrust and come about hard to port, one-eight-zero degrees," Betty ordred.

"Aye, ma'am, cutting thrust, coming about one-eight zero to port."

At the maneuver, even as she continued to run on her original vector, the _Sword_ lay perpendicular between the two Covenant battlecruisers, oriented towards the one labeled Charlie-6.

"Wade, fire the MAC."

The ship shuddered once, and then twice, as Wade fired the Magnetic Accelerator Cannon. The _Sword_ had been outfitted with new capacitors at the same time as their engine upgrade, and could fire twice before having to recharge.

Both shots hit home, and the shields on Charlie-6 fell away like so much paper.

DeLong acted immediately, and sent a fusillade of Archer missiles into the side of the exposed battlecrusier. Including one timer-detonated, thirty megaton, Shiva missile.

"Nice shooting, boys," Captain Director said. "Helm, bring us back to original course and heading, then punch it to full."

The _Sword_ rotated back around, faced her original course towards the planet, and went to full acceleration. Then they were past the battlecruisers and on course towards Thebes.

"Helm, ETA?" Betty asked.

"Twelve minutes, ma'am, assuming constant acceleration until orbital insertion."

"Excellent. Tactical, how long until we're clear of the projected blast radius?"

"Forty seconds, ma'am. Be advised that Charlie-6's shields are back up, and that Charlie-5 and Charlie-7 are turning to engage."

"Will it matter?"

"No ma'am."

"Good," she replied, and then she took a deep breath and turned to her exec, wondering just how badly had they been hurt.

"Ron..."

"We've got a bunch of little hits all over the ship, Captain," Ron replied. "Nothing major, but a lot of those hits are real close to things that I don't like..."

"Death by a thousand cuts."

"Exactly. It's gonna be a hundred-pound monkey to contain, and...

"I need to get to Damage Control," her exec finished with a shrug. "I can coordinate bet-"

He was cut off when a brilliant flash washed out the tactical holo.

* * *

The thirty megaton HAVOK warhead carried on the Shiva missile didn't have the power to overload the shields of a Covenant starship. More than one UNSC tactician had realized how that could be used to a commander's advantage, but it was only rarely that an exploitable situation presented itself.

In this case, approximately forty-five seconds after Charlie-6 restored his shields, the HAVOK nuke detonated. The initial energy of the blast expanded outward at near light-speed, hit the inner edge of the shield bubble, and then bounced back in at the same energy level. In that instant of oven-like concentration, before Charlie-6 was erased from the universe, the energy and heat of the explosion exceeded that of a mere thirty m-tons and approached that of a planet-cracker.

Seven-tenths of a second later, Charlie-6 _died_. It didn't explode, it didn't implode, and it didn't vaporize; it did all three, and none of the above, all at once. It simply _died_, its shield bubble ceased to exist, and then the very fires of hell swept across the Covenant battle group.

The shields of Charlie-5 and Charlie-7 held up for a moment. However, they had been damaged by MAC fire from _Hephaestus_ and _Pender_. Both shields failed, and the ships soon followed, each reduced to a minuscule globule of the same glassy texture that marked the scores of human worlds they had left in their wakes.

The hellfire continued on, raking the remaining four battlecruisers, yet those blows were less than fatal; it had expended much of its energies on Charlie-5 and Charlie-7.

Charlie-4 was breached in two places and began to list like an intoxicated flamingo, drifting dead in space. Charlie-3 and Charlie-2 were each rocked, and Charlie-3 lost shielding for a moment, but they were relatively undamaged.

Charlie-1 barely felt it.

* * *

"BOOYAH!" Ron cried as he threw his hands up above his head in celebration. The other cheers on the bridge matched his own, in spirit at least, if not exuberance and vocabulary.

"Helluva shot Guns, Wade," Betty said to Lieutenant DeLong and the AI.

"Helluva plan, Skipper," Carlos replied with a grin.

"Yeah, I know," Wade replied smugly, as he rubbed his holographic fingernails against his holographic shirt.

"Ron, how soon-" Betty started to say, but the site of her exec _prancing_ caused her stop and raise an eyebrow. Ron caught sight of her bemused expression and brought himself to a stop with an embarrassed flush.

"Sorry, Skipper. It's just... it's been a long time since I had the chance to do that."

_'Last time was when she said "yes".'_

"I know," Betty replied softly. "See to Damage Control, Mr. Exec. If your luck holds, there'll be plenty of time for dancing when we get back."

"Aye aye, Skipper. With your permission?" he said, gesturing towards the hatch.

"Get my ship put back together, Ron. I was actually planning on going home today."

* * *

_'This is going well,'_ Admiral Go thought as she watched her newly consolidated battle line. _'Too well.'_

_Pender_ had maneuvered to her right flank once _Heart of Sword_ had passed the Covenant battle line. Joyeuse, Anduril, and Kusanagi, the three ship-AIs, had networked themselves and their respective defensive grids together. That link gave them a good three-hundred percent increase in efficiency for the ECAP and NMI systems, and created a nigh-impenetrable barrier of fire between them and the enemy weapons.

Now, her ad-hoc battle line had at last been able to concentrate its fire. It wasn't doing much, as the Covenant point-defense systems were as annoyingly accurate as ever, but they were slowly scoring hits on Charlie-3. The battle wouldn't end anytime soon, but...

But she was at one-to-one odds, the thing was a _stalemate_, and it was angling in her favor.

As much as she liked the sound of that, Shego was cynical enough to know that it wouldn't last. There were too many disturbing variables.

First was the initial attack itself, and the fact that the torpedoes had been in flight _before_ they'd arrived, as a quick review of the data from the tactical sensors had shown. She _knew_, right then and there, that she had at least one traitor in her fleet. What she hoped was that said pernicious son-or-sons-of-a-bitch had died with the _Lotus_, but she wasn't going to count on that.

The second was the fact that none of the remaining Covenant vessels had even bothered going after the _Heart of Sword_. In fact, when it came to Charlie-3, disengaging and giving chase would have made the most sense. Which meant that something there wasn't quite as rosy as it seemed.

She wondered when, and how, the other shoe would drop.

"ETA on the _Sword_?" she asked the tactical officer.

"Five minutes, ma'am, assuming she's maintaining max acceleration."

Shego nodded in response, and then she sat back and listened as her flag captain both ordered a shift in fire, and then called the deputy engineer to ask how long it would be until the slipspace drive was back up.

That was another thing that didn't sit right with her. The drives going down, on all five ships? And Commander Lipsky van-

Then it clicked.

Then the bridge hatch opened, and something else went click-click-clank. Shego turned and stared dumbly at the anti-personnel mine that was slowly ticking away on the floor of her bridge.

"GET DOWN, NOW!" her flag captain roared.

He managed to drag her to floor just before the mine bounced up into the air and exploded.

The entire bridge crew was cut down.

Shego herself lay on the floor, dazed beneath the body of her flag captain, as she listened to sounds of her dying and wounded crew.

_'The transports. It's just like the transports... the same sounds, the same noises... God, what is going on?'_

Then there was a new sound, the thump-thump-thump of heavy boots treading calmly across the floor. The a second sound, this one a voice.

"C-c-c-c-commander L-l-l-," her gunnery officer whimpered.

Then a third sound, the report of a M6D pistol, and the officer's whimpering stopped.

A fourth sound, the clack-clack-clack of fingers on switches and keys, and then she heard an fifth sound, a tone as the point-defense systems went off-line.

A sixth sound, a second pistol report, and a seventh sound, the sparking of a destroyed control panel.

Then Admiral Go came to her senses, shoved aside the remains of her valiant flag captain, and rose shakily to her feet. It hurt to move, really; despite her the man's best efforts, she felt like she had a few broken ribs, or worse.

She looked down and noticed a slick red spot on her abdomen.

Definitely worse.

"D...Drew?"

"It's Doctor Drakken," her Chief Engineer replied imperiously. "Drew Lipsky doesn't exist anymore."

"Why?"

"Oh please, Shego, he died with Mid-"

"No," she replied, oddly impatient. "_Why_ did you do this?"

"Why? Hah! As if you could understand the reasonings of my genius, Shego."

"Try me."

"It's quite simple, Shego," he explained. "The Covenant took prisoners when my colony was attacked; I was one of them. Unlike the simpletons of that world, _they_ recognized my genius, and they made me an offer."

It was hard, but Shego didn't flinch away at the maniacal gleam in his eyes.

"They invited me to join the Great Journey, Shego, for the price of acting as their agent. _Me_, Doctor Drakken, the spurned genius amongst my own kind, found acceptance and exaltation within the Covenant.

"_I _was the one who alerted the Covenant to our mission. _I_ was the one who changed the coordinates just before we jumped to slipspace, and _I_ was the one who sabotaged the jump drives!"

"Earth?"

"No... but only because I don't know the coordinates. Don't look at me like that, Shego. Earth... humanity... small prices to pay for my own exaltation, for my own immortality, alone out of all of our species, amongst the Forerunners! Dr. Drakken conquers all! MWA-HA-HA-HA-"

Admiral Sheila Go's next to last act was to draw her sidearm and shoot her traitorous chief engineer in the head.

Her last act, even as she saw the concentrated plasma fire streak through the broken defensive net, was to activate her own fire control board, and launch as much as possible of the _Hephaestus's_ remaining ordinance at Charlie-3.

She had the satisfaction of watching it explode before the plasma torpedoes ripped her defenseless ship apart.

_Hazlet_ and _Pender_ followed her shortly thereafter.

**END CHAPTER 2**


	3. Xiphos

_A/N: And now, this one begins to approach my usual chapter length. Enjoy the extra portions. As always, Kim Possible belongs to Disney, and Halo belongs to Bungie and Microsoft. I just play in their worlds._

_Also, I hate needlers..._

* * *

**Chapter 3 – Xiphos**

_2517_

_She hadn't started crying yet. That surprised the young rating, as he led the little girl down the corridors of the ONI vessel. Lord knew, if he were in her position, he'd be kicking and screaming._

_Instead, she looked around and studied everything, her green eyes wide with curiosity... and a little bit of fright. But it was a fright that she had under control, and the rating marveled at her obvious strength of spirit. Despite his own... reservations about the program, he acknowledged that ONI had picked a worthy candidate in this one._

_Then they reached the cryo-racks._

_Despite the slipspace drive, it still took a great deal of time to move between stars, and so most ship's compliments spent the travel time asleep in deep-freeze. He had his own opinions of the efficacy of that policy, but about all an ONI E-3 like him could say to anyone in authority was an incessant litany of 'Yes, sir' and 'No, sir, that's my _brother_ who does the thing with the fish'._

_Nor could he say anything about how badly the cryo-pods creeped him out; they looked way too much like coffins for his taste, and-_

_He paused when he realized that the little girl was no longer walking next to him._

_She stood at the door quivering in terror. He didn't know why, but he could guess, and the rating turned back around and knelt down in front of her._

"_Look, I know you're afraid," he began gently. "Believe me, these things creep me out, too! But we can't let fear stop us from doing what we have to, sweetheart... and I'm sorry to say, but we need to put you into that pod so the ship can get underway."_

"_Well, maybe I don't wanna go," she said, and he was amazed at just how defiant her voice was, despite the fear-induced quiver. "Maybe I wanna go back home to my Mommy and Daddy."_

"_I know you do," he whispered, and he would never hate himself more than he did at that moment. "But that's not possible right now, kiddo. There's something that we need to teach you how to do, something that only you and a few others _can_ do, because no one else can. We need your help."_

_She paused for a moment, and then her red pigtails shook as she nodded unhappily._

"_'kay," she replied. "But does that mean that I have to get into the pod?"_

"_I'm afraid so," he replied as he stood back up. "Don't worry about it, though, it's as safe as we can get it now. I've done it hundreds of times."_

_Which was a slight exaggeration, but accurate. He felt her tense once more, and then she whispered something like 'Anything is possible, for a Possible' as he picked her up and placed her in the pod._

_Still, she flinched away as the pod closed and activated the freezing process, and the look on her face was such that the young ONI E-3 had to get someone else to thaw her out, since he could not bring himself to look into her eyes._

_

* * *

_

_2552_

The ships had lain in wait as the battle raged, ready to intercept and engage any human breachers. Though the fleet commander had discounted such an occurrence, he _was _a Sangheili, not a Jiralhanae, and as such was not an overconfident, loudmouthed, boot-licking imbecile. He'd come to respect the fighting spirit of the humans over years, and knew that it would be best to prepare for anything.

So it was that a dozen modified Covenant troop ships powered up and angled towards the _Heart of Sword_.

* * *

"_Mother of-!_"

Captain Director turned at the sound of the sensor tech's cry, and then she too bit off a curse as she saw what he'd seen on the tactical display.

The _Hephaestus_ had exploded. It looked like she'd taken another one of the Covenant vessels out with her, but even so that meant that Admiral Go-

_Hazlet_ went up, and then her bridge fell quiet.

"My God," someone whispered, in a quiet enough voice that not even the Captain knew who it was.

"I hope that was the start of a prayer," Betty Director said, surprising herself with how calm her voice sounded. "Because we're going to need His help right about now. But until then...

"Helm, maintain course and heading, but ready a few evasive protocols. If the Covenant comes after us I want to be able to stay alive and fight. Tactical, keep an eye on the remaining Charlie's, I want to know if they so much as peek in our general direction. Guns, I want you to keep the weapons hot and ready. Clear?"

Everyone, save Lieutenant DeLong, answered in the affirmative.

"Lieutenant?" Captain Director asked as she turned towards her unusually quiet weapons officer. He sat there, staring blankly at his displays, and the look on his face was one that she'd seen all too often.

She walked over and laid a hand on his right shoulder. He jerked back to awareness, and started to turn around, but then he checked himself and turned back to his console.

"Sorry, Skipper," said huskily, "I just... it's just that my sister's a pilot in _Hephaestus's _fighter wing."

She said nothing in response, as there wasn't much that she _could_ say, not to a junior officer under her command during an engagement. She just looked at him, with sympathy in her eyes, until Carlos DeLong pulled himself back together and set to work. She mixed sympathy with approval at how quickly he'd done so, and that approval grew as she noticed that he was taking his own anger and pain and not letting it distract him, but _using_ it to help him stand to his duty.

"Weapons hot and ready, aye ma'am," he said after a moment. "You give the word, and I'll blow the nose off the first Covenant son of a bitch that sticks it out too far."

"Well done, Guns," she said with a grin, and she squeeze his shoulder once again as murmurs of agreement filled the bridge.

She turned away form Carlos, and saw on the tactical plot that _Pender_ was now a rapidly expanding debris cloud. They were all alone, with at least two Covenant vessels in-system, and who knew how many more lurked in wait for them on the far side of the planet, hiding in Thebes' sensor shadow? None of her crew were stupid; they knew the odds, knew how even their brand new weaponry wouldn't protect them for very long. Even so they worked with renewed determination, and Betty Director felt herself swell with pride as she realized that the exact same sentiment was flowing through everyone on her bridge.

They all planned to ensure, when their souls marched into Valhalla, that they would have one _hell_ of an honor guard!

* * *

"... so if we put PO Warshawski's team in section A-4, and PO Dorgan's in D-20, then that _should_ cover the last of the problem areas," Ron announced as he looked at the damage holo. The various consoles and walls of the Damage Control Center (DCC) were lit by the multi-colored glow from that giant simulacrum of the _Heart of Sword_.

"Sounds good to me, sir," one of the younger lieutenants replied wryly. Ron only allowed himself the barest smile at his subordinate's tone, since the DCC was, technically, the _lieutenant's_ domain. However, damage control itself was the XO's bailiwick, and Ron had learned, the hard way, that it was easier to run damage control from the DCC than it was from a ship's bridge.

If nothing else, the giant hologram of the ship, with its color-coded damage indicators, took the guess work out of locating problem areas and prioritizing repairs.

As things stood, in this case, they hadn't been hurt all that badly. While the hull was breached, in several places, it wasn't breached near anything critical, so the ship wasn't in danger of exploding due to a fusion reactor breach, or the rogue detonation of a Shiva. However, the slipspace drive was in even worse shape than Ron had feared; the deletion of both of the operating software and firmware had permanently disabled the their ability to transition to FTL. It would require a months long stay in a shipyard to repair, and Thebes didn't exactly have one of those on hand.

"_Bridge to DCC, for Commander Stoppable,_" announced a voice over the communications system. Ron nodded for his subordinates to be about their assignments, and then he patched his headset into the ship's communication system.

"Bridge, DCC, Commander Stoppable speaking."

"_Ron, this is the Captain,_" Betty Director said over the com. "_What's our status?_"

"Not as bad as feared, Skipper. We've got a dozen or so hull breaches, but nothing that about a half-hour's worth of welding can't fix. Fortunately what damage we _did_ take missed engineering and the magazine, even if just barely so. The FTL drive's another story, though; I'm afraid we're pretty much stuck in-system."

"_I see. Casualties?_"

"A few," he sighed. "Fifteen dead, so far, about three times that injured in one way or another. Nothing Bon-Bon, I mean, Doctor Rockwaller, can't handle."

"_Of course. Ron, we've got another problem,_" Captain Director said, and then she proceeded to fill him in on just how bad their current sitch was.

"Where do you need me, Skipper."

"_Get back to the bridge, Ron. I'll need you up here to help coordinate the battle._"

"On my way, ma'am."

"_Bridge out_."

He jacked out of the com and turned back to rest of the crew of the DCC. The communication had been on a relatively private line, so he explained to them the basics of what Captain Director had told him. They were grim when he'd finished, but determined to see to their duties, and Ron unconsciously echoed his captain as he swelled with pride at their implacability.

He offered a few more words of encouragement, and then he turned and left the DCC.

* * *

They were traveling silently.

The commander had only allowed enough of an engine burn to generate a best-guess intercept vector, and then he ordered a complete engine shutdown for all twelve of his boarding craft. That all but eliminated what few emissions escaped from their stealth field, and so they traveled through the black practically invisible.

The Covenant boarding craft intercepted the UNSC _Heart of Sword_ three minutes out from planet Thebes. It was at that point their vectors crossed, and the _Sword_ passed right between the craft, with eight on the left and four on the right. They each fired four magnetic capture cables; each caught and held true on the _Sword_, and then the human vessel and its killers were coupled together, and the boarding craft reeled themselves in towards the hull.

* * *

"I'm sorry, Captain, I don't know where they came from," Wade apologized.

"Not your fault, Wade," Captain Director said as she glared at the sensor returns. "We know their stealth systems are better than ours... At least they can't stop us from reaching Thebes."

"Yes ma'am."

"Is Colonel Barkin ready to deploy?"

"Ready and willing, Captain."

"Okay. Signal all hands to prepare to repel boarders, and get our shipboard Marines to the engine room and hangar bay; I want those two spots hardened.

"And signal the Freezer, tell them to get our passenger out of storage... and to get her up here."

"I'm on it," Wade said, and Betty turned and stalked towards Lieutenant DeLong.

"Guns, can we get a firing solution?"

"Sorry, Skipper," he said apologetically. "They're too close the hull, and I can't depress the fifty mike-mikes enough to hit them. The angles are all wrong for an Archer shot, so-"

He waved his hands in frustration.

"Looks like we're gonna have to take it, Captain."

"I see," she said between pursed lips. She wanted to ask if he had any idea how they'd gotten that close, but that didn't really matter. None of it mattered, except getting the _Sword_ and her Marine complement into drop range of Thebes, and any speculation about hows and whys would just distract from that.

"Ma'am," Wade announced quietly, interrupting her thoughts, "they've just made hull contact."

"Right. Signal all hands, Wade. Prepare to repel boarders."

* * *

_'Okay, Ron-man,'_ he thought to himself as he drew his sidearm. _'You've dealt with this before, so just stay cool, make your way to bridge, and hope to God you don't run into any Hunters!'_

Ron was two levels down and two hundred feet aft of the bridge when Wade announced the 'repel boarders' order. Almost immediately his mind had flashed back to the last time he'd heard that particular call, and his palms had gone sweaty as he remember the long, terror-filled hours of running and gunning through the corridors of the cruiser _Wolf of Mibu_, as he chased and was chased by Covenant forces...

Then he reigned in his beating heart, checked the chamber on his M6D sidearm, and focused on his route to the bridge. He tried to push the old images out of his mind, but it was hard, given how quiet that section of the ship was, and just how close he was to her outer skin.

_'Just stay cool,'_ he admonished himself again. _'This isn't the _Mibu_, and you're not a lieutenant trapped and alone on the lower levels of a vessel that's crawling with Elites and Brutes and-'_

He rounded a corner and came face to face, in a manner of speaking, with a squad of Grunts.

Ron reacted first, by letting out a startled yelp and then whacking the lead Grunt across the face with his sidearm. The blow knocked the Grunt's face mask off, and tore it away from its hose connections. The Grunt fell to the ground, clutching at its throat and gasping for breath as a foul smell filled the air.

"Dude, what _is _that... oh, that's right," Ron said as he caught of a whiff of the odor and remembered that, out of all the Covenant races, he _wasn't_ afraid of Grunts. "You guys breath_ methane_, don't ya?"

He grinned evilly as the remaining Grunts just stared at him, and then he struck a perfect _tai shing pek kwar_ stance. The Grunts looked at him, looked at each other, and then as one they cried out in fright, threw their arms over their heads, and took off headlong back down the corridor.

"Yeah, that's right, you'd _better_ run!" he yelled after them. Then he knelt down next to the dead Grunt and took its plasma pistol and two plasma grenades. He'd received training in Covenant weapons during his ODST days, and he'd kept the special belt hooks they'd issued him to hold captured weaponry. He didn't know what he'd do with them, and he hoped he wouldn't have to use them, but he figured better safe than sorry.

At the very least, that was one plasma pistol and two plasma grenades that the Covenant _wouldn't_ be using against his crew.

* * *

Ever since she was a little girl, SPARTAN-487 had hated cryo-pods. She never told anyone why, and ever since she lost her name, no one had even bothered to ask. She was simply expected to put her fear aside and do what she had to do, which was something that she'd become quite good at over the years.

Still, she hated the cryo-pods. And no one but her was ever there to say that it would be all right.

Which meant that it was normally a relief to wake up... except that this time the relief was somewhat ruined by the look on the rating's face as he watched her gingerly step out of the pod. She waited until the internal systems of her MJOLNIR armor had cycled online, and then she inclined her head towards the young spaceman.

"Okay, what's the sitch?"

* * *

"All right people, _listen up!_" Barkin barked to his remaining company commanders as they gathered around him in the flight deck. A naturally gruff and hard man, the loss of a full half of his command, and his regimental XO, when the _Moonlit Lotus_ exploded had not helped his mood any.

"I just received word from the Captain that we've parked in Thebes orbit. Normally the Navy pukes would have us all organized about this, but the ship's been boarded by Covenant, and we need to get ourselves off of this boat as soon as possible."

Not that he liked that idea at all, as it was his warrior's instinct to head _towards_ a fight, and not away from one, but the Captain had been adamant: failure of the mission was not acceptable, and if Barkin valued his ass, then he would get said ass down to Thebes and started raising all nine levels of Hell.

She hadn't _quite_ made it an order, but the threat had been there.

"Well, we're all loaded up and ready, Colonel," Captain Jack Pellman, his senior company commander (and now de facto XO) replied. "Just waitin' for you to give the word."

Barkin nodded.

"The Covenant's got something going on down on that planet," he observed. "I don't really care what it is, whether it's God's own anti-son-of-a-bitch machine or a giant naked mole rat. All I know is, they built it, they'll likely use it against us and Earth, and so we're gonna go down there and take it away from 'em, or blow it the hell up!

"_Am I right, Marines?_"

"_Sir, yes Sir!_"

"Then let's move it, people!"

* * *

"First Pelicans are away, Captain," the Tactical officer called out. "No resistance so far."

"Looks like they're faring better than we are," Captain Director observed.

"It seems to be so, ma'am."

"Any word on the Charlies?"

"They seem to be holding back, Captain. Either they're dealing with something on their end, likely our remaining Longswords, or they're letting the boarders finish us off."

_'And they seem to be doing a good job of that,'_ Betty reflected as the ship shook from yet another internal explosion. They'd already knocked out her point defense systems, and half the Archer tubes, and from the internal tracks of the boarders it looked like their next targets would be the MAC and the engine room.

The only reason she hadn't scuttled the ship yet was because she was waiting for the Marines to disembark. After that...

Well, after that she'd be able to grant Steve _plenty_ of on-ground reinforcements. Even if they _were_ Navy pukes.

She grinned in amusement at what her old friend would think about that, and then the bridge door opened and the SPARTAN, wielding an assault rifle, stepped in.

"Ah, there you are Senior Chief," she said. She'd had enough experience with the SPARTANs to become accustomed to their appearance, but from some of the gawking that was going on she could tell a few of the younger members of her crew hadn't.

Which was perfectly understandable, of course; their hulking MJOLNIR armor made them quite a sight, even if SPARTAN-487 was shorter than was normal.

"Reporting as ordered, Captain," she replied crisply. "What's the sitch?"

Betty raised an eyebrow at the SPARTANs casual use of a phrase from Middleton Colony slang, but she didn't have time to explore the thought.

"The sitch, Chief, is that we've been boarded, we're about to be disarmed and disemboweled, and I'm about to give the evac order. You're aware of the protocols regarding shipboard AIs?"

"I am."

"Good. Wade?"

The AI's hologram flickered to life.

"Yes, Captain?"

"Its time."

The AI looked like he was about to say something, but he stopped himself and simply nodded.

"It's been an honor, ma'am."

"Same here, Wade. Too bad we couldn't give you and Guns any more kills."

"All in all, Captain, I'm content," Wade said as he took one last look around the bridge. "Okay, jack me."

Betty entered a command into the computer, and then Wade's hologram faded away and his core processor/memory chip ejected from the computer. Betty took it and handed it to the SPARTAN, who inserted the chip into the special slot in her helmet.

"Whoah, this is just like the systems in the _Sword_!" Wade exclaimed from inside her head, but the SPARTAN just rolled her eyes.

"Okay, he's in," she reported to Betty. "I'm assuming I need to get to the surface?"

"That's the idea," Captain Director replied. "But there's something I need you to do first. It seems that my erstwhile XO has gotten himself into a bit of trouble, and I'd appreciate it if you could get Commander Stoppable out of it while you're on your way. According to his CNI he's in the officer's mess; Wade can help guide you there."

The SPARTAN paused for a moment, seemingly unsure about something, but then she nodded.

"Do you want me to bring him back to the bridge, ma'am?"

"Normally, I'd say yes... but for now, I want you to take him with you to the surface. His ODST experience will come in handy there, and the fact that he knows Colonel Barkin will help establish at least an informal chain of command between the Marines and surviving Naval personnel, including yourself. Besides... there's nothing more he can do here."

"There would be some problem with command authority?"

"Colonel Barkin is... uncertain about some aspects of the SPARTAN program, Chief. Don't take it personally, but he's _very_ old school when it comes to such things."

The SPARTAN nodded in understanding, and Captain Director sent her on her mission. Then she turned to face the remainder of her bridge crew.

"Okay, here's the deal," she announced quietly. "As soon as the last Pelican is away, we sound the evac alarm. Once that's done, assuming we still have control of the engine room, I want a quick de-orbit burn on the engines, as I aim to try and land this ship on the planet, and hopefully distract the Covenant from the Marines. Helm, I'll need you to..."

* * *

_'And this,' _Ron thought to himself as he sent another round down-range, _'is why I _hate_ the Covenant.'_

Halfway between the bridge and his earlier encounter with the Grunts, he'd run into _another_ squad of Grunts, this one led by a red Elite. He'd managed to kill three grunts and stun the Elite with some well-placed pistol shots, but their return fire had forced him to retreat away from the attackers... and the bridge.

So now he was holed up in the kitchen of the officer's mess, facing no less than three Elites and twice as many Grunts, and somehow or another he was actually holding them off. He fired off two more shots, and then he ejected the spent magazine and tossed one of his plasma grenades over the counter.

He was rewarded by the distinctive sound of exploding Elite. He reloaded with his last magazine, and took advantage of the sudden abatement in the rate of fire to pop up over the counter and get a few clear shots off.

He quickly ducked back down behind the counter when the plasma fire from the remaining Elite and Grunts melted away a portion of the counter that was right next to his head. Then one of them tossed a plasma grenade, and the explosion blew away a full third of the counter and wall, and left his little redoubt exposed to the attackers.

He flinched away from the debris and plasma, and tried to ready himself to fight off the inevitable charge... but then another sound reached his ears.

Panicked Grunts.

The surprised bark of an Elite.

And the distinctive chatter of a 5.57mm assault rifle.

He popped his head up just in time to see the last Grunt fall, and to see the suddenly shieldless Elite get its head bashed in by a SPARTAN using the butt end of the rifle like a club. Then she entered the room and began sweeping it for more enemies, and Ron recalled what he'd seen on her data sheet when they'd brought her aboard.

Name, classified, designated SPARTAN-487.

Rank, Senior Chief Petty Officer, ONI.

Age, forty-one.

Sex, female.

Homeworld, classified with an asterisk. There had been a special attachment for the Chief Medical Officer of the SPARTAN's assigned ship, detailing the pertinent planetary conditions from natal development.

There had also been a listing of the various engagements that 487 had been involved in, and Ron had noted that she was the one who had singlehandedly put down the Killigan Rebellion, back before the human race realized that it had more to worry about than its own political shenanigans.

All in all, he'd been rather impressed when he'd read her dossier, and actually _seeing_ the SPARTAN in action had confirmed that earlier impression.

As he waved his hand above the counter to get her attention, Ron idly wondered if SPARTAN-487 needed a sidekick.

He had no idea where that thought came from.

* * *

The commander of the boarding party had detailed to himself the task of finding the human's command area and slaying each of the ones who controlled the ship. He was the oldest, and most disciplined, of all the Sangheili under his command; with no overriding desire to seek further glory in combat, he felt that he could safely take on such a stealth-intensive mission without the risk of distraction.

Yet as he closed upon the bridge, the commander came upon a prize that not even his iron discipline could resist.

It was one of the metal-clad demons that the humans had unleashed against the Covenant, and he felt a spike of thrill pierce him as he came across it. He had faced many of the human's "Marines" in battle, and had admired their courage even as he slew them by the tens and hundreds, but he had yet to face one of the demons that become the focus of so much talk amongst his fellow Sangheili.

He followed behind it, hidden by his cloak, his plasma sword at the ready but inactive. He wished to see where this demon was going before he engaged it in battle, as he wished to see for himself if their skill was all that it was reported to be.

That was confirmed for him when he watched the demon take apart another, younger, Sangheili and five Unggoy with just a primitive human assault rifle. The commander twitched his mandibles in displeasure at the surprised reactions of his now deceased subordinate, but then he brought himself back to focus.

The demon had entered the room, now, and had found another human there. He heard them exchange words in their unlovely tongue, and the commander grasped that the other human was a person of some importance on the ship... and his instincts were telling him that the other human was also responsible for the _other_ Covenant bodies that littered the room.

True warriors, the both of them.

He resolved, then, to reveal himself to his prey before he struck, so that they would have the honor of knowing who it was that had killed them.

As he rose to his full height and readied his plasma sword, the commander uttered a prayer of thanks to the Forerunners for the truly worthy foes that They had directed to the reach of his blade...

* * *

"Commander Stoppable?"

Ron inclined his head as the SPARTAN asked for him, more so at the surprise he felt when she called out his name... but also just a little bit at the strange catch he _thought_ he heard in her voice. He had no idea what that catch was, or if he'd even heard it at all... but he pushed that mystery out of his head and saw to the task at hand.

"That would be me, Chief," he replied as he slowly stood up and walked out from behind the counter.

"Thank goodness. The Captain sent me to find you, Commander, and you're to accompany-"

"_Behind you!_" Ron's roar interrupted her statement, and the SPARTAN turned her head just in time to see a gold-clad Elite looming above, plasma sword raised and ready to cleave her from shoulder to hip.

"_Pohc nassah!_" it cried as it brought its sword down.

Ron brought his pistol up, knowing that since the Elite had been cloaked that it was without shields, and thus vulnerable to a well-placed shot... but the SPARTAN was in his way, turning to engage, and he couldn't get in a good shot past her head.

In the end, he didn't need to. The SPARTAN moved too fast for that.

She grabbed the Elite's sword-arm with her left hand, but not to stop it. Instead she pulled it down even faster as she tugged it steadily to her left and away from her body. In the same motion she twisted about her left foot and brought her right hand up and over and slammed it onto the Elite's forearm, just below the elbow.

Then she brought that arm down, and Ron flinched at the fleshy and liquid crunch as she snapped it over her right knee.

The Elite roared in pain as its sword fell from a suddenly nerveless hand, but the SPARTAN did not wait. She release its arm, twisted at her hips, and drove her left fist into its mandibled jaw. Its head snapped around inline to its shoulder, but she did not follow through with the punch. Instead she moved her left hand to the bad of its head, brought her right hand up to its face, and with a fast, hard twist, she snapped its neck.

Ron looked on in awe as the limp and lifeless Elite fell to the floor. It had all been so fast, faster than he would have believed something of a SPARTAN's total mass could be, but it had also been so _fluid_. Each move that she had made had flowed into the next, like water through a stream, with neither pause nor break between the motions. A perfect, unbreakable offense.

His awestruck reverie was broken when she knelt down, picked up the fallen plasma sword, and delightedly exclaimed "Spankin'!" when she discovered it still worked. He cocked his head at her, momentarily confused by what she'd said... but the SPARTAN misread his confusion.

"They've got a deadman switch," she explained in response to what she thought was his unasked question. "If the Elite dies, then the sword's plasma batteries breach themselves and fry the electronics. Since I broke his arm..." she trailed off, not needed to say more.

Ron just stood there quietly. The SPARTAN began to worry that he was in shock.

"Commander?"

"You said 'Spankin''."

"So? I've said that since I was a little girl."

"But-" Ron started, but then he stopped himself. "Never mind, Chief. Need to get my head back in the game... what were you saying earlier?"

"Captain Director has ordered you to accompany me to the surface."

"What? We're in a battle, and my place is on that bridge! I can't-"

The evac siren cut him off. He closed his eyes, muttered something epithetical, and then he and the SPARTAN began searched the Covenant bodies for anything that they could use. He hated to leave, but he would...

He would because the woman who had saved him, and every other serving survivor of the Tri-Colony system, from self-annihilation had ordered him to.

* * *

"The evacuation has been announced, Captain," Lieutenant DeLong reported quietly. "The Covenant forces seem to have backed off of the flight deck, but they're redoubling their efforts against Engineering. Major Bryce's Marines are making them pay at five-to-one, but-"

"_Bridge, Engineering!_"

The somewhat-panicked voice cut off DeLong's report, and Betty was grim as she answered the call. The dirtied and blood-stained face of her chief engineer appeared on her monitor.

"Engineering, Bridge. Go ahead, Commander."

"_We're breached, Captain,_" Commander Beregovoy announced as he both drug someone - it looked like Major Bryce - across the floor and shot at something with his pistol. "_Covenant forces are pouring in; most of the Marines are dead, most of my crew are dead, and I think that some of these bastards have antimatter charges. We've done the best we could, but-_"

He cast a harried glance at something that only he could see, and then a calm settled over his features. Commander Beregovoy even ventured a small, genuine smile as he laid the Major on the floor and rested a hand on his control panel.

"_Captain Director, is has been my greatest honor to serve under you,_" he announced, his voice as calm as his face. "_I swear to you, ma'am, they won't get those mines laid._

"Das vidanya, Kapitan," he said with a fey look, and then he screamed something in Russian as he worked the controls that both sealed the engineering section off from the ship, and that vented its atmosphere into space.

Betty wanted to turn away from the horror of what was about to happen, but she _forced _herself to honor her Chief Engineer's last moments by watching and listening as all the air hissed out of that chamber and he, his surviving crew, the surviving Marines, and every single Covenant in the chamber died in that suddenly airless room. Only then did she allow herself to shut her eyes against it and turn away.

"Helm," she whispered quietly, "once the last escape pod is away, ready for a de-orbit burn, and prepare for a powered landing."

* * *

_'I should be heading in the _other_ direction,'_ Ron thought to himself as the SPARTAN herded him along. _'My place is on the bridge with the Skipper, damn it all. And here I am, running away, because-_

_'Because she ordered me to, and because no one from Middleton and in the service can say no to Captain Betty Director, not after she did to pull us back together. So if she wants me to go, then I'll go. But the Skipper had better stay alive.'_

He shook his head in frustration and kept on running. The SPARTAN had explained his orders further, and he understood what she meant about the chain of command... but it still rankled. Ron hated to abandon _anyone_, least of all Betty Director, and the fact that he was acting under orders didn't really assuage his conscience.

They were almost at pod territory, and he was already scanning the status of the various pods with his CNI. Either Covenant had been through the area, or the crew had already used most of the pods, because he only picked up _one_ functional status signal.

Which was right at the end of the corridor that lay around the next bend-

"Uh_-oh_,_"_ he exclaimed as they rounded the bend. Most of the escape pod ports were smoking wrecks, littered with debris and the bodies of _his _crewmen. At the end of the corridor, working on the escape pod that was his destination, was a team of Elites and Grunts.

He risked one glance at the SPARTAN, and then with a roar he charged at the Covenant forces, round after round blasting forth from his sidearm. The SPARTAN was right on his heels, firing at the Elites with an appropriated plasma rifle.

Ron took down five Grunts, then a sixth, and then an Elite fell, and then a seventh Grunt died... and with that Ron was past them and into the Bumblebee escape pod. He dragged the dead body of the pilot out of her chair and climbed into it himself, starting the pre-launch sequence even as he strapped in. He could hear the SPARTAN behind him, fighting through the Covenant forces... and then she was in the pod as well, tossing the spent plasma rifle, and a small package that in his haste he hadn't noticed, out the back of the pod after her. Then she slammed the door shut and yelled something to him about a 'Covenant bomb' and 'enemy reinforcements'.

"How long was the bomb set for?" he asked as he finished the preflight.

"Wade hacked it," she replied, tapping the side of her helmet. "He can detonate it whenever you want."

Ron nodded, laid his hands in his lap, and waited.

"Um, Commander?"

"Just wait," he said quietly, his eyes closed in concentration. "You said there were reinforcements, right?"

"Right."

"I'm waiting on them."

"Why?"

"You'll see."

He waited a moment longer... and then the noisy barks of angered Elites, Grunts, and what sounded like a Hunter carried through the rear hatch.

Ron smiled thinly.

_'Eat vacuum, squid-heads.'_

"Detonate the bomb once we're clear."

Then he launched the pod, his vector carrying him down towards the planet and away from the _Sword_... and he smiled in satisfaction as the Hunter that had been sucked out of the ship flew past him.

Along with a small gout of fire from the bomb that had taken care of the _rest_ of the Covenant reinforcements.

"You all strapped in back there?"

"Yeah. Re-entry gets exciting in these things, doesn't it?"

"Beats a HEV," Ron shot back as their little pod began to glow...

* * *

"Pod Whiskey-Romeo-Golf 427 is away, ma'am," the Tactical officer reported. "That's the last of them." He didn't mention that only a quarter of the pods had actually gotten off; nearly half had been destroyed by Covenant actions, while the crew had simply been cut off from the remainder.

Nor did they mention how that had totally buggered Captain Director's intentions for landing the ship. She had meant to draw the Covenant into the vessel and then detonate the engines, but with most of her crew still on board...

Well. They'd just have to improvise.

"Helm, execute," Betty ordered. Immediately the helmsman fired the engines and broke orbit, allowing gravity to pull them down rather than sling them about. The lower hull began to glow a dull orange, and then it steadily changed from brighter shades of red to nearly white as growing friction began to heat up the ship.

A powered re-entry was technically gentler than the old ballistic re-entries the earliest manned spacecraft had used, but a the simple fact remained that _that_ much mass, at _those_ speeds, was going to generate a _lot_ of friction when it started moving through atmosphere. The engines allowed the helmsman to control their attitude and heading, and to keep the speed down enough to where the heat generated didn't melt important parts of the ship, but that was about it.

But it was enough to survive re-entry, and the clouds ran away as a fully-intact _Heart of Sword_ breached the atmosphere of the planet known as Thebes, a spectacular burning tail trailing behind her. Her white-hot glow faded as drag forces slowed her down, reducing the friction against her hull. Even so she drove hard towards the ground, barely under control, and just barely slowing down...

Thebes' gravitational field was less than that of Earth's, and so between the reaction thrusters and the drag forces, the _Sword_ actually had a net velocity _loss_ as it roared through the atmosphere.

It was almost enough.

* * *

"That was the _Sword, _wasn't it?" Ron whispered as a giant, burning meteor cut through the sky.

"I think it was," the SPARTAN replied. "Looks like the Captain's plan worked."

Ron nodded in understanding. They'd come in well behind the few other escape pods that the _Sword_ had gotten off, but they weren't so far away that they couldn't see the Covenant Banshee's angling in to decimate the pods. However, with the _Sword's_ sudden and fairly spectacular arrival in atmosphere, the Banshees had angled off to attack the ship, and were leaving the escape pods alone.

But the scanners were picking up what looked to be a Covenant CAP about 30 kilometers out, so Ron landed the Bumblebee escape pod as quickly as possible. His chosen landing site was a grassy plain just on the edge of a large forest, and he brought them down with hardly an unexpected bump at all.

"Nice landing, Commander."

"Thanks," Ron replied as he climbed out of the pilot's seat. He stumbled in the light gravity, but quickly caught himself. "Can Wade pick up any of the other pods' emergency transponders?"

The SPARTAN cocked her head to one side for a moment, and then she nodded.

"He says there's one about fifteen clicks north, just through those hills," she replied, pointing a finger in the right direction.

"Fifteen clicks? Eh, no big, at least not in this gravity. It's about, what, .9 g's?"

"Point eight-eight, according to Wade."

"Even better. Okay, here's the plan. We head north and collect the crew of that pod. In the meantime, we need to figure out a way to get in contact with Colonel Barkin's Marines and the rest of the Navy crews, and then get everybody together and in the fight. Sound good to you, Chief?"

"Works for the time being, Commander," the SPARTAN replied as she rooted around in the pod's supply lockers. "I just hope you can keep up, and- ah, here we are."

"Keep up? I'm from a high-gravity world, Chief," Ron replied as he caught the headset that she tossed to him. "Point eight-eight g's a cakewalk. Tac headset?"

"Yes. Set it to a frequency of 1587.6. That'll connect you to my own communications system, and _should_ let you talk directly with Wade."

"Awesome," Ron replied as he fitted the headset and made the necessary adjustments. "Wade, you there buddy?"

"All set, Commander," the AI said over the com. "Good to hear you again."

"Same here. What's it like inside a SPARTAN's head?"

"Trust me, you wouldn't understand it if I told you," Wade replied. "I think we need to get moving, though. I'm hacking into the Covenant battle net, and there's at least a short squad heading this way."

"Right," Ron answered. He opened up another locker and pulled out a small utility vest, ten mags for his pistol, several ration packs, and a portable first aid kit. "Wade, keep us updated on the Covenant movements. Chief, you ready?"

"All set, Commander," the SPARTAN replied as she secured her own pistol, gathered up ammunition for her rifle, and checked the plasma sword.

"Excellent. Chief, you've got point, so let's move."

* * *

She awoke to smell of burning insulation and melted circuitry. She let out a soft moan as she stirred and picked up from where she'd fallen next to the tac console, and then another one, harsher this time, as she realized that she could no longer see out of her right eye.

"Skipper?"

"Guns? H-how long have I been out?"

"About thirty minutes, ma'am. Doctor Rockwaller should be up here shortly, so-"

"Never mind that, Carlos," she said, putting her own injuries out of her mind. "What's our status?"

"She'll never fly again, Skipper," the weapons officer replied sadly. "But the _Sword_ got us all down here safely. I sent the rest of the bridge crew out to help the Doc in gathering up the crew. From what they've said it looks like we lost fifty men or so in the landing, and another ten in clearing out the rest of the Covenant boarders. On the bright side, we _are_ clear of Covenant, for now at least, and from the way we landed I've got full fields of fire with the missiles and autocannons."

"So we're in a good defensive position, then. Excellent. Supplies?"

"We haven't inventoried them yet, but I don't think the food stores took any damage. At least, there's none there that DCC can see."

"Very well. Have we made contact with the Marines and evacuees?"

"Not yet, ma'am. Still working on it, but without any relay sats..."

"What about the Exec?"

"Nor him either, Skipper," Carlos replied quietly. "But I'm certain he and the SPARTAN made it out."

"Then we've got a chance, Lieutenant," Captain Betty Director replied, and a bit of her adamant certainty wound up rubbing off on Lieutenant DeLong as well.

"Maybe we do at that, ma'am. Maybe we do at that."

She was about to respond when the tactical holo flickered back to life, its cold and passionless images revealing to them the incoming flight of Banshees.

* * *

"I thought you said they weren't closing!" Ron yelled into his com, again, as he shot yet _another _Grunt.

"I said I was sorry!" Wade responded. "They must've been under radio silence or something! At least we caught them on the motion sensor."

They'd been running from a very persistent heavy Covenant squad, consisting of two Elites (one blue, one red) and handfuls upon handfuls of Grunts, for the better part of ten minutes. It helped that both Ron and the SPARTAN were good shots, and had each been trained in run-and-gun tactics, but the two Elites were no slouches either. But they'd at last found some decent ground, and had decided to make a stand.

It also helped, but only slightly, that they were fighting on a decent incline, with Ron and the SPARTAN having the advantage of firing down the hill. It wasn't much, but it made their shots just a little bit more accurate than the Covenant's. To their right the hill slopped away to the valley below, and to their left was a higher, steeper ridge.

Ron worried about that ridge.

"More shooting, less talking!" the SPARTAN yelled as she stepped back around an absurdly skinny tree to fire, yet again, at the two Elites that were leading the assault. The smell of burnt grass and wood filled the air as errant plasma bolts scorched away the foliage, and her shields shone golden as other shots struck against them. However, her own disciplined fire finally paid off, and the blue Elite at last dropped dead.

The SPARTAN ducked back behind the trees to recharge. Each of the trees were very tall and very skinny, as befitted their low-gravity environment. Which meant that they weren't the greatest the pieces of cover in existence, but they were better than nothing.

Ron shot down another Grunt, and then another... and then Wade yelled the one thing he'd been fearing.

"_Flanks! Enemy on the left!_"

Ron whirled about, behind his own tree, and saw five Grunts lining up on the ridge-line. They had a perfect shot on him and the SPARTAN, and they were armed with needlers.

In response, Ron brought his pistol back up and started shooting. The SPARTAN continued to engage the enemy at the front, while Ron fired past and above her head to engage the enemy on the flanks, and each of his shots struck home, a single killing shot to the head. First one Grunt fell, and then a second, the third, the fourth-

And then his gun's slide locked open on an empty magazine.

The remaining Grunt took aim with its needler as Ron ejected the empty mag and worked to insert a new one.

The Grunt fired a full burst... and all of the needles impacted and stuck to the SPARTAN as she stepped out from behind the trees to attack. Her strategy had been to fire as much as possible while letting her shields take the hits, and she had continued along the same tactic.

The needles exploded. Her shields went down, the concussion stunning her.

Three plasma shots exploded into her chest armor, and Ron watched in horror as the SPARTAN went down. He finally rammed the new magazine home, racked the slide, and then he shot dead the offending Grunt.

Then he leapt out from behind the trees and slew what few Grunts remained, until it was just him and the red Elite. They stood there for a moment, regarding each other warily, and then the Elite let out a bark of challenge.

"You wanna play?" Ron said quietly. "Alright, squid-head, let's play."

He dropped his pistol and pulled the last plasma grenade off of his belt. The Elite actually _laughed_ as Ron activated the grenade and readied himself to throw it. It probably thought the sight was humorous as Ron didn't look like a soldier about to toss a grenade.

He looked like a pitcher on a baseball field.

'_Okay, Stoppable, he's gonna try to dodge this one, so watch the legs, just like they taught you. He's tensing, and... yep. Gonna go to my right. Heh, Mon always did say that was my best pitch...'_

He threw the grenade, the Elite jumped away... and the perfect screwball that Ron had thrown curved right and stuck itself on the Elite's buttocks. The Elite let out one last bark of surprise, and then the grenade went off and blew it in half.

"Booyah!" Ron yelled, but his exultation was short lived as he remembered the SPARTAN. He ran over to her prone form.

"Wade, is she-"

"She's alive," the AI responded. "The shock just knocked her for a loop, though, but I think-"

Static filled the connection as Wade did something with the armor, and then the SPARTAN let out a moan and started to sit up.

"Hey, easy there," Ron said as he helped the SPARTAN up to her feet. "You alright?"

"Not really. I think I'm gonna need that first aid kit you brought, and- Wade, is there a place here where we can hole up for a bit?"

"I think there's a small cave a half-click up ahead," the AI responded. "Assuming your suit's sensors are telling me what I think they're telling me, that is."

* * *

The sensors were right. The cave itself was situated within the ridge that the Grunts had used for a flanking position, but the entrance was sufficiently deep and concealed that Ron doubted any Covenant patrols would find them. Besides, they'd intentionally left enough evidence behind to point the enemy in a completely different direction.

Ron and the SPARTAN settled down against the cave walls, and she explained to him the inner workings of her MJOLNIR armor as he passed her the requested biofoam and specialized medications. He watched in fascination as she attached the various canisters to certain points on her suit, but that fascination turned to concern as he heard her hiss in pain when the healing systems activated.

"It hurts, doesn't it?"

"Yeah. Adrenaline helps a bit, so do the painkillers... but it's a consequence of the quick heal. How 'bout you?"

"Me? Oh, the arm," he said, tossing a quick glance at his left arm. A couple of plasma shots, and hot splinters, had brushed past it during the fight. The sleeve was shredded and burned, and the skin itself had a mixture of first and second degree burns and puncture marks.

"Like you said, adrenaline helps," he answered quietly. "It'll probably start hurting in a few minutes, so I'll take care of it then. Anyway... you hungry?"

"Yeah, actually. What do you have?"

"Well, assuming you like e-rat bars..."

"Does _anyone_ like e-rat bars?"

"Not that I've met," Ron said with a laugh, as he tossed her one of the bars. "But I didn't know if they engineered your taste buds along with everything else."

"It didn't go _that_ far, Commander," the SPARTAN said lightly as she set the e-rat bar on the floor next to her... and took off her helmet.

And at that moment, a part of him _knew_.

_'She looks so much like her mother,'_ was Ron's first, shocked thought as her helmet came off and he saw the SPARTAN's close-cropped red hair and bright, green eyes for the first time.

But it wasn't for the first time, after all. Of its own volition his brain superimposed over her the image of a long dead six year old girl, and brought to his remembrance her earlier use of slang terms unique to Middleton Colony... and then the rest of him _knew_, even as a stubborn part of his mind insisted on twisting and whirling in confusion as to how it could possibly be, _exactly_ who it was that he was looking at.

She looked at him then, with those big, bright green eyes, and he felt like he was looking at a ghost. In all honesty, Ron wanted to turn right around and _run_ out of that cave, but something held him in place upon its floor.

_'But... but it _can't _be...'_

"Commander? What's the sitch?"

He felt his jaw drop, to somewhere about his ankles, as he realized that while it _couldn't_ be... it _was_. And as to what _that_ meant...

He had no idea what that meant. Except that anything was possible, for a _Possible_, and that his world had just turned upside down.

Again.

"K... P...?"

**END CHAPTER 3**


	4. Hoplite

_A/N – All things Halo belong to Bungie and Microsoft. All things Kim Possible belong to Disney. 'Immigrant Song' was written by and I assume belongs to Led Zeppelin._

_This particular story comes out of the sick and diseased recesses of my own brain, and is the end result of what happens when I spend a day bored at work. Also, there are certain... continuity issues between this chapter and the first. I fear I must ask your indulgence in this, dear reader, as the scenario behind this story, and the cast thereof, has grown considerably since its inception. I may attempt to rectify this once the tale is completed._

* * *

**Chapter 4 – Hoplite**

First Lieutenant Yori del Cielo, Specials Platoon CO, 4/24 MIR, the 'Ninja Monkeys', was having a bad day. This was nothing new for either her or her men, as the Monkeys tended to pull the crap jobs anyway, but there were one or two little fillips to this particular bad day. For one thing, they were accompanied by something in the neighborhood of ten Navy ratings and one _very_ junior lieutenant j.g. They fought gallantly, and died bravely (which was why there were only ten left), but they weren't exactly up to Yori's standards.

For another thing, extract was well and truly FUBAR. Which was doubly bad, given the large number of Jackals they had on their heels. Fortunately, they'd managed to kill more than they'd lost.

Unfortunately, they were moving uphill through a forest, with trees high and narrow, sparsely placed upon the floor yet with branches that filled the sky. They were only alive because Yori had applied her Yamanouchi instruction to their E&E training, as she had to all other aspects of the personal instruction she'd given them when Colonel Barkin authorized the platoon. That training had served them well, up until now, but they couldn't run forever, the available cover grew thin, and-

"_Chu-i_!" one her men – Sigmundson, that was the name, Corporal Ludvik Sigmundson – called out to her. "Up this way!"

She looked to where he pointed and smiled: the rocky outcropping he indicated would be a good place to make a stand. Natural cover, offering what looked like _wonderful_ angles of fire.

"Well done, Lud-san," she said, pulling up next to him and patting him on the shoulder, even as plasma shots pock-marked the ground around them. Then they took off running again, as Yori simultaneously directed her platoon towards the rocks and ordered her platoon sergeant to assist her in staging a delaying action so they could get snipers in place.

Her orders were followed by a chorus of "Yes, _Chu-i_!", and she found herself grinning again. Her platoon sergeant, himself a bit of a student of military history, had bestowed the title upon her once the platoon completed training. Its pedigree was from pre-WWII Imperial Japan on Earth, and was a conceptual equivalent to 'First Lieutenant'. Given her... prior history she'd almost taken offense at the title, but there'd been real affection in the sergeant's eyes, and in the eyes of the men, when they called her that. So she'd at last accepted with a graceful bow, and a light blush, and the roaring cheer that had sprung forth from the Ninja Monkeys told her _why_ they'd wanted to give her a special title.

It was still strange to her, in a way, that she'd found the acceptance amongst the Marines, in form of a _Japanese_ rank, that she'd never found on her old world of Yamanouchi.

Mankind had, over the course of the centuries since colonization, left Earth and settled the stars for some of the damnedest of reasons. It seemed as if every splinter group or weird ideology with enough members and money had jumped planet and wound up on some colony world or terraformed moon somewhere. The bloody Klukkers even had their own planet (emphasis on _had_; Klukkerworld, as it was called by nearly everyone _not_ on the colony, was an _Outer_ Colony, and now was so much brown glass).

Few really complained, as such migration tended to get the idiots all nice and isolated in one spot and out of everyone else's hair. It was hopped that they'd simply inbreed themselves into extinction. A vain hope, perhaps, but one must look on the bright side of things.

One of those worlds was Yamanouchi.

The colony was founded by a group of _zaibatsu_, led by a fellow named Fukushima Arai, and a group of historians led by a sort-of-samurai named Toshimiru, who were convinced of the superiority of all things Nippon. Not so much in terms of Shintoism, or _bushido_, or even sushi (though they did hold sake as greatest of alcohols), but rather in terms a bit more... phenotypical.

In essence, they were a bunch of racists.

And in the end, they rebelled against the UNSC.

This drew the attention of a SPARTAN, the 43rd MIR, and 4th Army.

Their rebellion did not succeed.

One member of the 43rd MIR, which wound up garrisoning Yamanouchi well into the Covenant War, was a young Captain named Alejandro del Cielo. Young Alejandro, as has long been known to happen during occupations, fell in love with a local gal, one Takashi Kaoru. Kaoru, for her part, fell in love with him as well. That he was given to courtly graces certainly didn't hurt matters, nor did the fact that she found his Iberian features as exotically alluring as he found hers.

Fortunately for all involved her family was a relatively urbane and cosmopolitan sort (for a resident of Yamanouchi, which wasn't saying much), and allowed the marriage, albeit begrudgingly. Then Yori came along, the Grandparent Instinct kicked in, and so far as they were concerned, the union had been their idea all along.

It was the grandparent's influence, in fact, that allowed Yori admittance to the Yamanouchi School. Their case was helped by the fact that Sensei was himself also a relatively urbane and cosmopolitan sort (again, this wasn't saying much). Kaoru herself had been one of the few female graduates of the school, and she and Alejandro both had raised Yori with the conscious intent to prepare her for the school.

For her part, Yori thought it was a good idea.

She still thought it was a good idea, for she had learned much from the teachers, even if she'd had more bad days there than good. Her relationship with Sensei was decent enough, even if it was only forged through her shear competence than through any special love he had for her. Of the student body, half tolerated her, while the other half considered her mere presence (almost even her existence) as a special and unforgivable personal affront; the old attitudes and thoughts still prevailed in a large segment of the population, and to them and their children she was and would forever be _gaijin_. The foreigner. The outsider. The half-breed who was... worth less than one of _pure _blood. That she was demonstratively better than any of them at all things ninja most assuredly did not help matters.

Especially in the eyes of a student named Fukushima. He had a given name, but he neither used it nor allowed anyone else to call him by it. He was, after all, a direct male-line descendant of Fukushima Arai, and that was name enough for anyone, thank-you-very-damn-much. In fact, he used to insist that he be called Fukushima-_sama_, rather than Fukushima-_san_, for reason of his exalted descent.

Used to, until he tried to force this point with Yori. She refused point black to call him Fukushima-sama (or to call him Fukushima-much-of-anything, unless she absolutely had to). That this half-breed refused to do his pure-blood nobility only natural obeisance infuriated him, and he called her out over the slight. She accepted his challenge, and face him in the _salle_ according to the rules of the school.

He lost the desire to be called Fukushima-sama when Yori kicked his pure-blood ass five ways from Thursday.

Not, of course, that he didn't find other ways to make her life miserable.

Not, of course, that she didn't kick his pure-blood ass quite often, when given the opportunity.

But at last she graduated, and was called to a meeting with Sensei, a requisite counseling session about what she intended to do with her education (and it was a good education, for along with _ninjitsu_ the school grounded its students well in the liberal arts, even with a distinct "Nipponese superiority" slant). She informed him, politely, diplomatically, but firmly, that she intended to travel off-world and enlist in the UNSC Marine Corps.

Sensei was not enthusiastic about her career choice. Even when she mentioned the Covenant War he was not enthusiastic. As far as he was concerned, the Covenant Invasion was merely a propaganda ploy on part of the UNSC, designed to allow those who had _"marched in and trampled upon our most ancient and sacred traditions" _to force an even greater measure of control upon the human-settled galaxy. And even if the Covenant _did_ exist, he'd argued, it wasn't as if the UNSC was having any great effect upon their advance, if the reports were to be believed.

"_And what has the UNSC ever done for you, Yori-san?"_ he'd concluded. _"Eh? What has it given you, that you should serve it?"_

"_It has never called me _gaijin_," _she'd answered after a long moment's silent consideration. In the silence that followed (as not even Sensei could claim that for himself) Yori stood up, bowed deeply, expressed her deep sorrow that he could not give his blessings to her choice (for she had come to respect him deeply), and then took her leave.

They never spoke again.

Yori hoped that the old attitudes had finally broken down on her world. In a way, she was certain they had, for by all accounts the UNSC vessels stationed in Yamanouchi space had forced the Covenant to kill them before they glassed the world, and her people, for all their faults, deeply understood honor and duty. She hoped that sacrifice had been enough to engender a reconciliation in the hearts of Yamanouchi. Maybe it was.

But even if it wasn't, her own duty was clear, as she found a slightly thicker-than-normal tree, ducked behind it, and readied her rifle. She and the platoon sergeant would draw the Jackals in two different directions, and then withdraw to the rocks under the cover of the platoon's fire. It had been her singular honor to lead, train, and fight with these men, and if she must die here with them, then that would be her honor as well.

Yamanouchi had taught her that much, at least.

* * *

Captain Betty Director, CO _Heart of Sword_, was having a bit of a good day/bad day mix. A good day, in that she and a decent portion of her crew were alive, despite the crashed ship, and because her plan to distract that Covenant from the Marines seemed to be working. A bad day, because her plan to distract the Covenant from the Marines seemed to be working.

"Designate targets Bravo One, Bravo Two, and Bravo Three," Lieutenant DeLong called out as he worked the (barely functional) tactical controls. "We have three Covenant Banshees inbound. ETA six minutes."

"Weapons status?" Betty asked as she tied a rag over her ruined eye. With her working eye she studied the flickering and staticy tactical holo, and saw for her self the inbound Banshees... and something else, a faint, ground-level sensor contact, situated eastwards and bearing west-south-west, towards the only opening in the mountains that _Heart of Sword_ had landed between.

"Archer pods ready and working, Captain. Targeting is a bit iffy. P-D cannons are down, but we've got maintenance crews on it. Nukes-"

"Simplify, Carlos. Can-" she winced at the sudden spike of pain "-can you engage with what you have?"

Shit. Her legs were going weak, and this pain in her abdomen- Just what she needed with a Covie air attack on the way, and the other sensor reading that looked a lot like a bunch of Covenant infantry and armor come a'marching.

"I... I think so, ma'am."

"Then be about it, Guns," Betty replied, bracing herself against the tac console and pushing the pain _out_ of her expression. Her only role in this would be to project an air of confidence, a beacon of_ something_ that her beleaguered crew could latch onto. And by God she was not going to leave that bridge unless Bonnie herself came up and made it a medical order.

And even then she'd probably fight it.

* * *

Commander Ron Stoppable, XO _Heart of Sword_, once of ODST, was having the single weirdest day of his life. Except for maybe the incident with the noodles, the monkey, and the soy sauce... but no, this topped that. Finding out that _Kim Possible_ was alive and freaking _SPARTAN_ topped that to no end.

Even if, a small, dispassionate portion of his mind observed, Steve Barkin's reaction to _this_ would be somewhat similar...

He had the vaguest of notions that his jaw was hanging somewhere about his ankles, that his eyes had taken on a certain dinner plate quality, and that his e-rat bar was laying on the ground.

Dammit. That was one of the _good_ flavors. They were so very rare.

"I thought it was you."

Forcibly, he dragged his brain back to the present.

"What?" he asked the SPARTAN – no, _Kim._

"I thought it was you," she repeated, and he noticed that she looked almost as shocked as he did. "When Captain Director told me your name, and when I saw you in the mess... Ron? It's _you_, isn't it?"

"Yeah," he said breathlessly, nodding his head and quite visibly getting a grip on himself. It was very hard (like looking at a ghost), but he put a stranglehold on his instinct to freak out. "Yeah, it's me, KP. I... Kim, we thought you we _dead_! Last I saw you, you were _six_, just _lying_ there in a hospital bed, and I watched you _die_ right in front of me!"

So much for the stranglehold.

"How in _hell_ are you here? You're supposed to be _dead_!"

"I think," Kim said softly and slowly, "that they replaced me with an unstable flash clone."

"An unstable- yeah, okay, that makes sense," Ron replied, calming down in the space of a breath. "And we all thought- it looked so much _like_-"

All of sudden he jumped up and hugged her. She, with a somewhat bemused expression, patted him on the back, not fully sure how to react to this, but deciding that it _wouldn't_ be a good idea to hug him while wearing the armor.

"It's... it's good to see you, KP," he said at last. "You don't know how good. I mean-"

He let her go and stood back, looking her up and down, and a big grin crossed his face.

"I mean, if you, Kim Possible, can come back from the dead," he said, "then maybe..."

"Anything's possible, for a Possible?" she said wonderingly, as if she were surprised to hear herself utter those words.

"Yeah. Maybe we've got some hope here after all, KP. I... I just wish your parents could have seen this."

She turned her face away from him.

"They were on Middleton, when the Covenant glassed it?"

"Yeah. I'm sorry, Kim."

She stood there a moment, lost in thought, and then nodded.

"I'd thought as much, but no one ever told me. I just-" she stopped again, and shook her head. "I'm just glad you weren't there as well, Commander."

"Back to the formalities?"

"Yes. Please and thank you. This... this is a bit much for both of us, I think, and it'd be best if we..."

"Kept our heads in the game?" he finished with a light smile. He saw the old spark and fire of his friend in her eyes, and he wanted nothing more than to find out how much of Kim Possible remained in SPARTAN-487. He wanted to tell her about school, and Monique, and Bonnie, and Felix, and everyone else. But he guessed that conversation could wait until later. Assuming there was a later.

But anything was possible, for a Possible, so 'later' just might be happening, after all.

"If that's how you want it, Chief, then that's cool," he continued. "We've got a lot to do. The Captain gave _me_ a lot to do, and I guess I'd better be getting down with it."

"_I'd recommend eating first,"_ Wade said over their coms, _"but be quick about it. I've been monitoring the Covenant battle-net, and there's something going down a about a klick and a half north of us."_

"If some of our people are in trouble," Ron asked, "then shouldn't we, I don't know, hurry?"

"_The Marines seem to be holding their own,"_ Wade answered, _"and the two of you will do a lot more good fed and ready. Just do it quickly."_

"Wade."

"_Yes, Chief?"_

"How much did you hear of our previous conversation?"

The AI was silent, and Ron stared at Kim in dawning understanding. He knew the Big Secret, now, and there would likely be consequences to that. Potentially bad ones.

"_I-"_

"This is going to involve some creative paperwork, isn't it?" Ron asked.

"_More than likely, Commander,"_ Wade replied, the AI sounding relieved.

"Aw, man."

* * *

"I believe we have driven them off, Sarge-kun."

"And not a moment too soon, _Chu-i_," the platoon sergeant replied, looking at his two remaining clips. "If we have the chance, I'd recommend attempting to regain the ammo reserves at the landing site."

"_If_ we get the chance," she replied, then lowered her voice. "Was I right to move, Sarge-kun? Tell me truly."

"As you said, _Chu-i_, the landing site was an indefensible position," he replied steadily. He held his Lieutenant in high regard, and knew that she did the same for him, and that her asking the question wasn't a sign of weakness. Just the desire of a Lieutenant to learn, something that he'd always liked about her. "For a withdrawal under fire, it was very orderly. One of the best I've seen, at least."

"Perhaps," she allowed. It went against the grain to pull back under fire, no matter how justified it was, but it _hadn't_ been a rout. An orderly pull-back to a better position.

Unfortunately, they'd left a fair amount of their rifle ammo with the downed Pelican. But the site was only a half-kilometer away, and if the Jackals were cleared out, then-

"_Chu-i!_"

She looked up. It was Ludvig, again.

"_To the south!_ _They're coming again!_"

Yori looked through her rifle scope, down to the south, through the trees. She raised an eyebrow in surprise.

"Sarge-kun," she said evenly and calmly. "Please take a look at this."

The sergeant looked through his own scope and bit off a curse.

"Is that-"

"It does appear to be so, yes. They have adopted a _testudo_ formation."

The _testudo_, or tortoise, formation was the classic defensive posture of the Roman Legions. In this case, the Jackals had formed a six-by-six square. The front rank had their shields up and interlinked, leaving just enough space for their plasma pistols. The middle twenty had their shields up and angled over, both to protect the top and to cover the open spaces on the front and flanks. The ten on the flanks simply held their shields to sides. A few of the snipers tried to take the shot, but the angles were all wrong, and there wasn't quite enough open space for their bullets to penetrate.

Then the Jackals opened fire.

"Who taught them how to do that?" the sergeant asked as he and Yori ducked to cover. "I want to know who taught them how to do that."

"Is there a reason, Sarge-kun?"

"Yes, so I can track him down and shoot him." He shook his head. "Jackals fighting as disciplined, organized infantry. Who would have guessed?"

"It could be worse."

"Please, enlighten me."

A plasma shot showered them with heated gravel.

"It could have been _Elites_ fighting as organized infantry."

"Oh, please no," the sergeant groaned. "Stuff of my nightmares, _Chu-i_. Ranked Elites."

"_Fight the horde,_" came Ludvig's voice over the com, singing. He sang at some of the strangest times. "_Sing and cry..._"

* * *

"...Valhalla, I am coming!"

Lieutenant DeLong pushed a button and a pair of Archer missiles sped out from the ship.

The three Banshees had been joined by three others, then by six, then by twelve, and then there were twenty-four – now twenty-two, he'd swatted a pair – Banshees screaming down upon them. Again, there wasn't much for her to do, with her ship on the ground and quite thoroughly unable to maneuver. There wasn't much for anyone to do, so the only people on the bridge now were her, Lieutenant DeLong, and about fifteen ratings running the tactical and communications systems.

Everyone else was involved in the repairs.

She smiled a bit as Carlos swatted a third Banshee. Another missile exploded without a hit, but the concussion scattered the other Banshees away from their attack run. They regrouped and tried to come in again, but Carlos held them out of range, each Archer shot hitting just the right ship to disrupt the formation and force it to break off.

"Captain," came a whisper by her ear, making her jump, "would you care to tell me just what in the _hell_ you're doing on your feet?"

"Just holding down the fort, Doctor Rockwaller," Betty said, turning to face her CMO. Commander Bonnie Rockwaller, MD, looked almost just as she back in high school. Even the obvious signs of aging she wore well, for they added a definite air of maturity to her natural beauty. She even made the _uniform_ look hot, as the not-so-well-disguised glances from several of the crew attested.

There was a bit of... history between her CMO and her XO, though Betty didn't know the whole story. Something about a rather adversarial relationship in high that had warmed considerably when Dr. Possible (female) took Bonnie under her wing, and then something about a chance meeting in a bar, about six months after Middleton's glassing. The details about _that_ were shrouded in secrecy, except for the fact that Ron and Bonnie tended to blush (he just a bit more than she) when anyone brought it up.

"Of course you are," Bonnie replied. "And you can do that sitting down."

"Commander-"

"Sit in the chair, Skipper," Bonnie said in her queen-bee voice, the grown-up queen-bee voice, the one that had seen her world, her lover, and so many friends die, and took no argument.

Betty sat in the chair, one of the few that actually remained upright in the detritus-covered bridge.

"Better. How are you feeling?" she asked quietly.

Another Banshee exploded.

"Not too well," Betty answered equally quietly. "A bit weak, and growing weaker. Some abdominal pain, but-"

She stopped with a stifled gasp as Bonnie started poking around her stomach. She winced again when Bonnie poked her ribs, and the doctor scowled and whispered a curse.

"Captain, you have two broken ribs, probable major organ damage, and most likely are bleeding internally," Bonnie said quietly and methodically. "You need to get off this bridge and down to what's left of sickbay."

"No, Commander."

"Dammit, Skipper, if you don't-"

"Bonnie."

"This is one of those Hero-Captain things, isn't it?"

"It's a duty thing, Bonnie. My place is here, on this bridge, so long as I'm still conscious, until the ship is out of danger. No ifs, ands, or buts. Am I clear on this?"

"Yes, ma'am," Bonnie answered, resigned. She knew her Captain well enough, and decided to spare herself the effort.

"Now, how are we for wounded?"

"One point in your favor, Skipper, is that you're _not_ the worse case I've got," Bonnie replied with a shrug. "Most of my SBAs made it out okay, so we've got the staff, and the supplies, to handle the load. Just..."

She nodded towards Lieutenant DeLong.

"Just keep us alive so I can actually save some of them, 'kay?"

"We'll do our best," Betty replied.

"Can't ask for anything more than that, I suppose."

Another Banshee exploded, and another, and then the survivors scattered and fled. Towards the east. Towards the incoming horde of Covenant infantry.

* * *

The horde came, organized as taught by their Lesser Prophet sponsor. The Kig-yar involved didn't know where he'd learned the tactic, and they didn't much care. All they cared was that it seemed to be _working_, that the interlacing of their shields kept the rifle fire of the humans at bay and allowed them to shoot on the advance. A slow advance it was, but a steady one, a nearly safe one, which would persist until they were upon the humans, the range where the human's rifles would be a liability, and then...

And then the Kig-yar would fight as they were meant to, and then they would feast.

But in their awe of the new tactic, and in their bloodlust of the fight to come, they missed something something that no Roman legionnaire worth his pilum and lorica would have missed. For in their assault _all_ the Kig-yar were focused on the enemy in front, the one that shot. Not on their flanks. Not on their rear. Not above them.

Not in the trees.

* * *

"That... is the second strangest thing I've ever seen," Ron said as he and Kim crouched in the spare underbrush and watched the advancing Jackals. Both were rather stymied by what they saw.

"That looks like a _testudo_ formation," Kim said.

"A what?"

"_A shield formation used by the old Roman Legions, on Earth,"_ Wade answered. _"It worked pretty well for them, though I wonder who taught it to the Jackals."_

"I'm kinda curious about that myself," Kim replied, "but we've got more immediate problems. Like how we stop it and save those Marines."

"Chief?" Ron asked after a moment. "Do you have a spare plasma grenade?"

"Uh, sure," she replied, pulling one off her belt and handing it to him. "Do I want to know what you plan to do with that?"

"I'm going to climb up that tree over there," he said, pointing towards a particular tree that was both along the Jackal's line of advance and had a reasonably thick branch jutting out at something less than skyscraper heights. "And then I'm going to toss this," he held up the grenade, "into the middle of their formation."

She looked at him for several seconds, and even through the visor Ron could see her working the situation out in her head.

"Okay," she said at last.

"Just like that?"

"If you say you can, Commander..."

"Hey, Mom always did call me her little monkey," he responded tartly, and then shuddered.

"Commander?"

"I always hated monkeys. Summer camp. Bad experience. I'll tell you about it later."

He crawled off towards the tree.

"Good luck, Ron," Kim whispered when he was out of earshot, and wondered why she called him that. That life, the name _Kim Possible_, was behind her now. Her memories of her parents and family were little more than fading shadows (weren't they?), and she was honestly surprised that she'd even remembered Ron at all. They'd only been _six_, for crying out loud.

Yet when they put her in the cryotubes, and when they put her on the table to be modified, hadn't she cried in her heart for her parents to reassure her? Hadn't she cried out to Ron for the same?

But that tube, and the table, had changed her. Kim Possible had cried out. Her name was Kim-487 now.

Wasn't it?

She shook her head. Existential questions could wait until after the plasma stopped firing; for now, she had a duty to attend to.

Then she began to creep forward, towards the rear of the Jackal formation, so she could either exploit his opening _or_ bail him out of trouble in case the plan went awry.

It always had gone that way, when they were children.

* * *

The tree was narrow, and offered precious few hand-and-foot-holds. Still, Ron made the climb faster than one would have thought, given the difference between Thebes' gravity well and the one to which he'd been born. The branch that he'd aimed for was a bit... thinner and far more flexible than he had thought from the ground, but it held his weight, and he scooted down it until he was right above the middle of the Jackal formation.

He had _no_ idea why they didn't see him. Maybe it was his luck at work, or-

A ricocheting bullet whipped past his head. It seemed that the Marines were trying to make a fighting stand, and they looked to have taken out a least a couple of Jackals. Either way, there was no real point to delay, so he switched on the grenade and tossed it towards a small gap in the shields.

It hit one shield, bounced off, hit another, bounced off, then landed at the edge of a third and plopped onto the ground right in the middle of the formation.

The _testudo_ is a good formation for keeping enemy missile weapons _out_. However, the umbrella of shields had the unforeseen effect of keeping _in_ the supraheated plasma charge from the grenade. The blast went up, hit the shields, angled back down, and swept along the ground and gutted the Jackal formation.

"Boo-yah!" cried Ron, as bits and pieces of flash-fried Jackal filled the air around him.

Then, "Uh-oh!" as the branch gave way and unceremoniously dumped him into the middle of the ruined _testudo_.

* * *

She sprinted towards the remaining Jackals just as soon as she saw Ron fall. What few Jackals remained would quickly recover from their shock, and Ron lying stunned and dazed in the middle of them would _not_ be a good thing. Not tactically.

Not... personally? Maybe not, she admitted, as Ron seemed to have brought out _something_ in her that had long lay hidden. At least, that's what she worried was happening. Maybe she just didn't want the man her goofy, former best friend had become to die.

Either way, it was the right choice.

She forwent the pistol at her side, and ignored the rifle on her back. Instead Kim drew the plasma sword she'd taken from the Elite, and set the blade alight as she waded into the Jackals. Some heard her coming, and turned to fire, but they moved so slowly, seeming to take ages just to twist about and raise their arms. And then she was upon them, each attack with the sword twisting her away from their shots, and each twist away from the shots leading into an attack with the sword.

They moved so _slowly_, and she could hear the wind roaring past her as she moved, the air crying out as she cut through it.

* * *

At the sound of the grenade explosion, Yori had simply raised an eyebrow, figuring that it was little more than a Jackal attempting to get one over the rocks and failing. At the sound of panicked_ and pained_ Jackal, she took a risk and stuck her head up over the rock.

Then she grabbed her rifle, popped herself full up, and sighted in.

"Platoon!" she called over the com. "Up top and rifles out. Do not shoot the SPARTAN!"

* * *

All Ron knew was that he was lying on the ground, he'd lost his gun, and there were a lot of temperamental Jackals who not only surrounded him but who were also putting two and two together regarding what had happened to their fellows. He figured that he was about to experience Death By Jackal, and for some damn reason, all he could think was that he really wished he'd gotten to try meatcakes.

He'd heard they were really good.

Then there was a dark shape carving its way towards him, and bullets flying about him, and Ron curled himself up into a ball and squeezed his eyes shut.

Then it was over, the fight had stopped, but he _felt_ some sort of presence looming over him-

"Commander?"

Ah. Kim. He kept his eyes shut.

"Am I dead?"

"I... don't think so, Commander."

Tentatively, he opened his eyes. There she was, standing over him, plasma sword in hand, with a bunch of dead Jackals scattered about them. He turned his head towards the rocks and saw a group of Marines, along with some of his crew, clambering down and walking towards them.

"Good," he muttered as he sat up. "'Cause if this is heaven, then Rabbi Katz owes me a refund!"

He was about to ask her for a hand up, when-

"Holy crap! That's the XO!"

"Lieutenant," he said as he, with great dignity, pushed himself to his feet. "Murphy, right?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Keeping your men in hand, Lance?"

"Yes, _sir_!"

"Good job," he finished, giving the young j.g. a pat on the shoulder. Then he turned to the (very attractive) Marine lieutenant, the one whose patch said-

"Lieutenant... del Cielo?" he asked, momentarily stymied by the juxtaposition of her name and facial features.

"Commander Stoppable," she said quietly, bowing low. "My thanks to you, and to the SPARTAN-" she bowed again, this time in Kim's direction- "for saving my men and myself."

He turned an interesting shade of red and waved his hand. Kim just nodded.

"Yeah, well, just doing my duty, Lieutenant."

"I know, Commander."

"In any case," he continued, growing strangely uncomfortable with the look in her eyes, "what I need right now is a situation report."

"Of course," she answered crisply. "Up atmospheric entry, Colonel Barkin designated a position at 405407N150832W as the rendezvous point for the regiment. We were attempting to make our way there when our Pelican was attacked by a two ship flight of Banshees. Our pilot drove off the attack, but we were damaged and forced to land at a position some five hundred meters west of here."

"That's where they met us," Lieutenant Murphy interjected. Ron raised an eyebrow.

"We put down bare meters from their escape pod," Yori explained. "Their training for such an endeavor as this is... lacking, but they have fought bravely, Commander. They do yourself and Captain Director honor."

"I'm glad to hear it, Lieutenant," he said, nodding at Murphy and noting the tone of pride he heard in Yori's voice. This was one group of Navy pukes, he figured, who would ever always belong in part to the Marines.

"So you withdrew a half-klick under constant fire from the Jackals?" Kim asked.

"That... is correct, Senior Chief," Yori answered warily. Kim cocked her head to one side, clearly doing the math...

"Then I'm impressed, Lieutenant," she said at last. "Very impressed."

"It was... a difficult task," Yori said with a slight bow. "But I have an _excellent_ platoon."

A bit of a cheer greeted that, and Ron grinned.

"Well, Lieutenant, what do you say we get your excellent platoon over to the rest of the Marines?"

"_Commander, those coordinates are nearly fifty kilometers away, if I'm reading this right,"_ Wade warned over the com. _"It's a defensible position, but I really wish Colonel Barkin had picked something a bit closer."_

"So transportation's a problem."

"With our Pelican down, yes," Yori answered.

"Um, sirs?" Lieutenant Murphy said, raising a hand for attention.

"Go ahead, Lieutenant," Ron said.

"Sir, if it's a right we need... well, we were sort of on fire at time, but when we were coming down ballistic I spotted a small Covenant outpost. Looked to have at least one of those tuning-fork transports of theirs, maybe more."

"Can you tell me where it is?"

Murphy turned in place for a few moments, getting his bearings. Then he turned around and pointed in a vaguely east-south-east direction.

"That way. About three, maybe four klicks."

Ron just nodded. Lieutenant Murphy was one of _Heart of Swords'_ junior astrogators, and had earned a reputation at the Academy for always knowing where he was in relation to where he was going. The kid never got lost, _ever_.

"Sitch me, Wade. What are we in for?"

"_There's a small outpost where he says it is,"_ the AI admitted. _"And if I'm reading this right, it looks as if most of the garrison was deployed elsewhere."_

"_Where_ elsewhere?"

"_You're standing in them, Commander."_

"Ugh!" Ron said, jumping back. He had, in fact, been standing atop the very well-done remains of a Jackal.

For a half a second, he thought he heard Yori giggle. But if the Marine Lieutenant _was_ laughing, she hid it well, and thus spared most of what remained of Ron's dignity.

"Right, well," he said, brushing himself off and trying to act nonchalant. "Lieutenant del Cielo? K- Chief? You up for assaulting a Covenant outpost?"

Kim knelt down, picked something up off the ground, and handed it to him.

His gun.

He took the pistol from her and tucked it back into the holster.

"Let's go," she said.

"If I may make a suggestion, Commander?" Yori said.

"By all means."

"Haste forced us to leave a portion of our ammunition, and some... heavier equipment, behind at the Pelican," she admitted. "I would recommend a brief detour to collect it."

"We can carry heavy stuff," one of the ratings put in, causing the Marine next to him to laugh and smack him on the back.

"It'll cost us some time," Ron mused, "but then again, if you can't do any good when you get there, hurry isn't all that important. All right, Lieutenant, sounds like a plan."

"Then would the Chief care to take point?" Yori offered, as she gestured in the direction of the fallen Pelican.

**END CHAPTER 4**


	5. Molon Labe

_A/N: I didn't mean for this chapter to take so long, but one part of it gave me fits, and I managed to lose track of time. I apologize. I have also had to... fudge the timeline a bit. I think the narrative flows a bit better that way, but if you should experience any temporal dissonance while reading, that's why._

_I also did _not _intend for it to be this _long_, but I had much to do in this section, and it grew a bit more than I had anticiapted. I beg your indulgence in this, dear reader, and I hope that you will still enjoy this new installment._

_As usual, Halo belongs to Bungie and Microsoft, Kim Possible belongs to Disney. The book _Hell's Faire_, mentioned in this chapter, is copyright John Ringo and Baen Books. The song _March of Cambreadth_, quoted in this chapter, is copyright Heather Alexander._

_Enjoy._

* * *

**Chapter 5 – Molon Labe**

_2525_

_You are Kim-487._

_That was the refrain that had dogged her every step for the last seven standard years. It followed her like the droning of the bagpipes; it guided her like the metronomic tapping of the drums. Every PT session, every tactical exercise, every encounter with CPO Mendez, every conversation with the other SPARTAN-IIs was build upon the bedrock assumption that Kim Possible was gone, and Kim-487, SPARTAN-487, was all that remained._

_In her bearing, every part the ideal soldier, it was true._

_In her eyes, bright and wary and always on guard, it was true._

_In her face, that showed no fear as they strapped her fourteen year old body to table, to subject her to the knife, it was true._

_In her heart, Kim Possible called out for her Daddy. She called out for her Mommy. And she called out for her best friend, Ron Stoppable. _

_She was afraid, but she'd learned to hide her fear. She wanted to cry, but she'd learned to hide her tears. She wanted her Daddy and her Momma to show up and tell her, "Don't worry, Kimmie-cub. It'll be okay.", but she'd learned to find reassurance in herself, and in the presence of the SPARTANS beside her. She wanted to play in the creek behind her house, or just listen to Ron laugh and enthuse about something completely ridiculous and off-the-wall to everybody except him, but she'd learned to put away childish ways for the way of the warrior._

_She wanted his laugh, his bright brown eyes that showed that he thought she was just the coolest girl _ever_, and she wished, as the anesthetic kicked in and the procedures began, that she would get to see Ron Stoppable and her family just one more time..._

* * *

_2552_

The world known as Thebes, named such for reasons inscrutable to all but the cartographers, was a world of only moderate (in terms of frequency; on the rare occasions that the plates _did something_, that something was quite noticeable) tectonic activity. However, there were a lot of individual _plates_, whose relatively infrequent motions had driven them together into three primary continents, each of which were crisscrossed with mountain ranges. Most of those ranges were worn down by time and weather, reduced to gently rolling and tree covered mounds. Yet a not insignificant minority were far more recent formations, as such things are measured, and towered high above the surrounding land with great spires of solid rock.

And in a .88g gravity well, those spires could reach some pretty impressive heights indeed.

It had also, as Colonel Steven Barkin (CO, 24th MIR, the Mad Dogs, UNSC Marines, "Who's the big dog now? Woof-woof-bark!") discovered on his way down from orbit, given birth to sentient life. The look-down-radar in his command Pelican had spotted ancient ruins atop one of the mountains. It wasn't so high that the air would be too thin to breath; it _was_ fairly level, if terraced; and there looked to be only one way up to it, a single zig-zagging road, just barely wide enough for a Covenant tank. There was the possibility of air attack, yes, but that would be a factor anywhere on the planet, and he had the resources on hand to fortify against a Banshee raid.

All in all it looked like a good place to set the regiment down, reorganize after the losses taken on _Moonlit Lotus_, send out scouting parties to identify and case the target... then saddle up and show the Covenant why "hoo-rah!" is and will be unto the heat death of the universe a cry to be feared.

A good plan, or at least the nucleus of a good plan, and it all came unraveled in the six point seven-two-nine seconds between the order to land-and-gather and when the squadron-strength flight of Covenant Banshees came screaming out of the sun.

He'd lost three Pelicans, and all the men on them; twelve others, including the one with Lieutenant del Cielo and the Specials Platoon, were forced to break formation and had gotten lost in the ensuing furball, though one of those had quickly found its way back to formation; and five others were damaged, including the one containing Captain Pellman, a support platoon, and the Captain's command Scorpion tank and crew.

The tank, flight crew, and support platoon had survived; Captain Pellman and his gunner had not.

Thank God, though, that his three Assault/Escort Pelicans (the other ten were lost with _Moonlit Lotus_) had managed to down the Banshees without any losses of their own. Configured not for troop transport but as gunships, and ready for limited CAP and extended CAS operations, they were each pearls beyond price.

Thank God, also, that the remnants of his tank company (ten tracks, not counting the command track) had survived; Captain Pellman's XO, a young first lieutenant whose name Barkin hadn't quite figured out yet, was showing good hustle in getting the tanks organized, and _none_ of the regular tanks had lost a single crew member.

Still, an inauspicious start, all things considered, and in a way, it only got worse when they actually landed.

Barkin was not a superstitious person. He had little to no use for ghosts and goblins, and kept only to some of the more arcane traditions of Corps because a great many of his junior officers and senior NCOs (including the Sergeant Major, an honest-to-God Ghurka) swore by them. He did make it to chapel on time each Sunday, but he was not one of those who equated religion with superstition. But there was something about those ruins...

They looked too familiar for one thing, like something – he hesitated to even think it – out of the ancient history of Old Earth itself. There was also a sense of _wrongness_ about the ruins. Not that they didn't belong where they were found, unsettling familiarity or not, for each block of stone, cut to where they fit together without mortar, had clearly been carved from rock of that very mountain, but that something _wrong_ had happened there. Something fundamentally _unholy_, for that was the only word that could describe the feeling.

Then one of the troopers uncovered some wall paintings, and carvings, in one of the buildings.

Images that depicted what was likely a native Theban (bipedal, vaguely humanoid, and tall and spindly as befitted its low-gravity origin) being attacked and... changed... by something that the discoverer christened a "giant yellow eggplant death-crab". Other images followed, depictions of a war against the crabs and changed Thebans, a war fought with stone knives, spears, and something that looked suspiciously like an atl-atl. They were accompanied by indecipherable writing (Barkin's men were Marines, no xenoarchaeologists), which despite its unreadability gave off a definite air, in the changes of slant and thickness of mark, changes unrelated to the equally obvious changing of hands, of slowly mounting terror and desperation. The last drawing was a depiction of the ruins as they must have been in their prime, with the stone-age Thebans mounting a defense against a great force of the strange crabs and the changed.

There were no further images.

Upon seeing those drawings, somehow preserved despited the ravages of time, Steve Barkin found that he might just be able to believe in ghosts after all.

But he hadn't reached the rank of Colonel by giving in to atavistic terror, so he stamped down firmly on his mounting disquiet and set about arranging for the defense.

Now, Steve Barkin nodded grimly as he surveyed the battlements. Whack drawings aside, he _had_ chosen his ground well. The ruins made for positively _lovely_ fields of fire and – theoretically – hard cover against Covenant plasma weapons. Each building now hosted a single squad or more, with the rest the Marines still spreading out, while most of the larger buildings also bore a single anti-air team on the roof.

He would emplace two platoons, along with his own headquarters platoon, at the end of the road just behind some earthworks which his engineers were in the process of erecting. Those three platoons were little more than bait; they would engage whatever Covenant infantry made it up the road, then fall back into the ruins and draw the enemy in along with them. At which point the rest of the Marines would make bloody use those lovely fields of fire.

But he didn't expect it to come that. In fact, he didn't expect any of the enemy to make it up that road.

Two sets of terraces flanked the city; one going downhill, the other going uphill. He'd corralled the Pelicans on the uphill terraces, and set a small guard there of his regular sharpshooters. The command tank, by and by, he placed at the top of the uphill terraces, the highest point which could be seen from all areas of the ruins. It did _not_ sit _in defilade_, but rather fully atop the ground, turret angled as high as it would go. The tank served as their battle standard, for upon the gun was chained a skeletonized Elite, bones held together by the remains of its armor and careful preservation on part of Captain Pellman and his crew.

The downhill terraces, now, those were the interesting ones. They were of higher average elevation than the zig-zag road, and ran parallel to the roads "best fit" line. He didn't know what those terraces had once been used for, whether for crops or for play, but now the downhill ones crawled with engineers.

Great clouds of dust and dirt filled the air as they used digging charges to carve out a series of ditches on those terraces, readying them to nestle _in defilade_ all ten surviving tanks (save the command track) and most of the Warthogs (all five of the M12A1 rocket variants and sixteen of the thirty-two standard M12s). Each pair of tanks, with a M12A1 in support, would target a single kink in the road. The M12s would hold the ground between the tanks, darting in and out of trenches as needed for support. Just for the hell of it, he placed a pair of fire teams, each with two M19 "Spanker" rocket launchers and support, along with the tanks and 'hogs.

Give how it was a perfect position for enfilading fire, one might as well be thorough.

_'I can see why you chose to stand here,'_ he thought in salute to those long-dead Theban warriors. _'This is good ground, and if only you'd had the advantage of a couple thousand years worth of weapons development... anyway, if it comes down to it, I hope you don't mind if I show you how it's done.'_

Somehow, Steve Barkin who didn't believe in ghost got the distinct impression that whatever ghosts resided at these ruins wouldn't mind such a demonstration _at all_, and he grinned savagely at the thought.

Time for some recon.

* * *

"Guns, load up a recon drone," Captain Director ordered.

The same geological peculiarities that gave Steve Barkin his rally point had also created the box canyon which nestled the wrecked _Heart of Sword_. The only way in, save by air, was a narrow pass between two rather large hunks of rock. Which meant that the narrow pass was the _only_ way in, as Lieutenant DeLong had repeatedly demonstrated his ability to swat from the sky _anything_ the Covenant tried to send.

Which, along with the Banshee kills from the earlier engagement, included a pair of Spirit transports that had tried to airmobile something into the canyon. They... hadn't gotten far, and Covenant forces hadn't tried _that_ again for the past twenty minutes. Which was so far beyond normal Covenant behavior (somehow, an enemy that _lacked_ genocidal fervor just didn't seem _right_) that it was cause for worry.

The _Sword's_ sensors could barely see through the pass, just enough to show a teeming mass of Covenant emanations, but not enough to give any specifics.

"Loading," Lieutenant DeLong announced, and Betty tried not to smile at the not-too-well concealed note of worry in his voice. She knew she was in bad shape, seeing as how it was getting a bit hard just to stand up, and Bonny certainly didn't look thrilled that her captain was up and moving on the bridge.

But they all knew that she could not, would not, be anywhere else.

"Drone loaded," he continued in that same even tone. "Straight up?"

"Read my mind, Guns," Betty confirmed with a genuine smile which, for a moment, hid the all-too-obvious pain in her face. "Launch drone."

"Launching," he said, then pressed the firing stud. A second later, "Drone launched."

The drone streaked out from the _Heart of Sword_ at level flight for a good twenty meters, then it pitched up and roared into the sky, bringing everything beyond the mountain walls of the box canyon into view.

The recon drone was little more than an Archer missile with the warhead removed and a miniaturized sensor suite and transmitter put in place. A _Halcyon_-class cruiser like the _Heart of Sword_ would only carry three or four of the drones, as they were of limited utility in a ship-to-ship engagement, given how if one was close enough to the enemy not to experience light-speed time lag, one was close enough that a drone wasn't needed in the first place. They were still carried because on the few occasions that they _did_ come in handy, the recon drones tended to haul one's butt out of the fire quite effectively.

In this case the drone didn't so much haul them out of the fire as it gave them a pretty good few of what the fire looked like, as it showed them the extent of the oncoming hoard of Covenant infantry and armor: ranks upon ranks of Grunts and Jackals, let by their Elite captains and supported by Hunters, Ghosts, the remnants of a flight of Banshees, and at least two Wraiths. Enough to fill the box canyon twice over, and the _Sword's_ weapons would only depress so far. At that point-

Betty Director took one look at the sensor readings and felt a bleak tide of despair wash over her, submerging her resolve. Her crew had worked wonders, and worked them still, but it wasn't enough. The would engage as best they could, hand-to-hand if necessary, but it would not be enough.

None of it would be enough. The Covent would come, her crew would kill many of them, maybe most of them, but there were too many, and all they'd have to do would be get in flush with the hull and cut into the engine room, and then-

Then Middleton, and Lowerton, and Upperton, all over again, except she'd be _here _for it. Unlike then she'd get to _watch_ and _feel_ it as her world and family burned away.

She took a look around the bridge, as if for the last time, not letting the fear show in her eyes. There was Doctor Rockwaller, bandaging up one the crewmen and getting ready to head back to sickbay, while trying very hard not to hover over her wounded Captain. There at the tac console was Lieutenant DeLong, looking a bit pale and worried, but otherwise calmly readying the missile pods and guns for a decidedly unorthodox ground engagement. Her helmsman, Ensign Eric Corwin, and one of the enlisted navigators, having nothing else better to do, had somehow managed to scrounge up a SRS99C rifle, plenty of ammo, and a spotter's scope, and were setting up shop at the forward viewport.

Several monitored showed reports from the remaining crew and Marines, as they brought weapons to the landing bays, the airlocks, the empty escape pod tubes, anywhere that had an opening, and made ready to fight.

They hadn't given up.

So how could she?

Betty clamped a stranglehold upon the encroaching despair and held it there until all it stopped squirming and clawing at her resolve. Then she flung that lifeless fear into some dark, sealed off corner of her mind and turned the rest of her self back towards keeping her crew alive. Gone was the fear, the desire to just curl up in a corner and wait for the inevitable.

She didn't _believe_ in the inevitable.

Returned now was Captain Betty Director, Commanding Officer _Heart of Sword_, UNSC Navy, Master and Commander after God alone, the woman who had tracked down every last survivor of the Tri-Colony System in the Service dragged them up by their bootstraps and and kicked them in the ass and got them to _live_ when so many survivors of other dead colonies had burned themselves up with directionless hate or killed themselves out of despair. The woman who gave them back their pride, and their passion, and helped them to turn their hate into focused and purposeful vengeance for their dead homes.

Kill her worlds, would they? Not so long as _one_ person from those planets lived.

Kill her crew, and her ship, would they? Not before she and her men exacted from them a fearsome price. For to reach her ship they'd have to fill the box canyon; and to fill the box canyon they'd have to come through that pass; and the pass between those mountains was a choke point and a killing field _Leonidas_ would have envied.

The pass. Between the mountains. They'd have to come between the mountains.

_Between_. The. _Mountains_.

It came to her, then. A long shot, but still a chance to not only _hurt_ the enemy but to _kill_ them and keep her own crew alive in the bargain.

Call it a crazy-ass idea. Betty certainly did.

So crazy, that it just might work.

"Guns," she said almost conversationally, "you remember those books you keep leaving the Officer's Mess?"

"Skipper?" he asked in abject confusion. Carlos was well-known amongst the crew as a fan of late-twentieth-early-twenty-first century military science fiction, possessing a library that started with the (still) famous and venerable _Starship Troopers_ and carried on from there. He was also the sort that tried to get other people to read the books he liked (it made conversation easier), and had taken to leaving copies of some of said books in and around the Officer's Mess. Quite a few the crew, including Captain Director, had found that they'd a bit of taste for that sort of story.

But what-all that had to do with the current situation, she could tell he had no idea.

Betty gestured at the view of the mountains, and the pass.

"_Hell's Faire_, Guns," she said, naming the title of one of the books.

"_Hell's-_ oh. The SheVa at Green's Gap?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of Windy Gap Hill, but that'll work too," she said with a grin. "How soon can you set it up for me?"

"Twenty minutes to set up, assuming you want to hit both mountains, sir," he answered, and she nodded. "We'll have to dial down the warheads, but the charge itself is doable. As for penetration..." He shrugged. "It _should_ work. But Skipper-"

"Lieutenant DeLong," she announced formally, "on my authority, you are authorized 'weapons free' for use of nuclear weapons against enemy ground targets."

"Holy crap," the lieutenant whispered, and added a "sir" almost as an afterthought. A nuclear strike by a ship wasn't exactly unheard of, but then again, those were usually conducted with the ship in orbit. And even then, usually not when an enemy unit was in such close contact with friendlies. Unless, of course, the friendly unit was about to overrun anyway and made a "six of one, half a dozen of the other" sort of call.

Firing nuclear-tipped missiles into a pair of mountains so as to induce a rock slide that would both seal the gap and bury the enemy was so far beyond standard operating procedure it just wasn't funny.

* * *

Aside from a brief encounter with something that looked almost, but not entirely unlike four-foot long june bug, there wasn't much hilarity on the march to the Pelican.

Kim did in fact take point. Ron and Yori followed just behind her. Yori's platoon sergeant took the six o'clock, with the rest of the platoon strung out between them in a somewhat flattened V, with the Navy crewmen somewhat nestled within the V. They were spread out, with at least two-and-a-half meters between each man (more, with the Marines), but still managed to cover ground relatively quickly, granting that it was unfamiliar forest.

Even so it was slow, silent going, that march from the Ninja Monkeys' engagement point back to their fallen transport. Which gave Ron just a bit too much time to think.

He'd said, once, to Colonel Barkin, that he didn't really care what the UNSC had done to create the SPARTANS; they killed Covenant, and that was good enough for him.

_'Only it isn't any more. Because now I _know_ what they did, and I'm suddenly finding that I care about it a lot more than I thought I would. But- for crying out loud, we were _six_. Six! We only knew each other for two years, and I ought to just barely remember her, and-_

_'And each day of those two years was a full as a year with anyone else. We just... clicked... back then, and only Monique's even come _close_ since. All of that ended- why? We didn't know about the Covenant back then. All we had were the secessionist movements... was that why they took her?_

_'To keep the UNSC in power? Yeah, it would've been bad if the UNSC had fallen, 'cause the only thing nastier than _this_ war would have been a galactic-wide civil war, but still... dammit, was it worth putting the Drs. P., all of us, through watching her-'_

His thoughts cut off when Kim stopped moving and raised her hand for halt, then lowered it for a down and freeze. Just before he dropped Ron looked through the trees and could just barely seen the nose of a nearby Pelican, and what looked like-

Yep. That was an Elite, patrolling.

Kim knelt there and watched for a moment, her head cocked to right like she was listening to something. Then she made the hand signal for 'Elite', another for 'eight', and then made the sign for a circular patrol.

Ron saw Yori, who had moved somewhat ahead of him, turn towards her platoon, point out four snipers, and then made a gesture towards the Pelican, one that Ron didn't recognize. The four, along with their spotters, dropped out of formation and crawled into the forest. A minute passed. Then ten. Then twenty.

Then thirty.

_'So what do you think about all this, KP?'_ he wondered. _'Do you even remember me, besides the name and the face? Do you remember who I was? We're not the same people we used to be, but I wonder how much they changed you. How much of the woman in that armor is Kim Possible, and how much is SPARTAN-487?'_

Forty minutes.

_'What do you think I should do about this, now that I know the great secret behind the SPARTAN program? You were my best friend, and I've been judging myself in comparison to you for these past thirty-five years, and now I just don't-'_

K-K-K-KA-BAM!

A pause. Ron figured that the snipers had fired, and would soon-

K-K-K-KA-BAM!

Yep.

"_Clear,"_ came a quiet voice over the com; the young Corporal, Sigmundson.

Ron stood as Kim waved for the rest of the party to raise up and start moving. While walking, she turned her head slightly and addressed Yori.

"Impressive shooting, Lieutenant. You _do_ have an excellent platoon."

"As I have said often," Yori agreed with a smile. "Though I can take little credit. They were all quite skilled when the Colonel allowed me to assemble and train the platoon."

"Certainly the fastest moving snipers _I've_ ever seen," Ron interjected as they stepped out into the clearing and caught sight of the ruined Pelican and felled Elites. "Thirty minutes for, what, thirty yards for the farthest man?"

"More like forty yards, Commander," Yori corrected as her four shooters stepped out of the woods. "And yes, it was a faster sneak than we are used to; normally we insert well ahead of the regiment and then maneuver into a support position. However," she continued as she, Ron, and Kim reached the back end of the Pelican, "sniping is not all that we do. Ah, good. They survived."

Six weapons capsules, two of them open, were attached to the rear portage area of the Pelican. Yori opened up two of the remaining four, and Ron's jaw dropped when he saw what was inside.

"Dude... boo-_yah_."

"I recommend that we distribute the rocket launchers amongst your crewmen, Commander," Yori said respectfully, though she sounded both pleased and amused at his reaction. "We have enough to arm, say, half of them, while the other half carries the reloads."

"How about it, guys?" Ron said, turning to the gathered Navy men. They raised up a brief cheer, and he grinned at Yori. "Sounds like the men are all about the rocket launchers, Lieutenant."

"Contrary to the rest of the Corps, I have always considered Navy men to be wise and discerning individuals," Yori said dryly.

"Of course we are," Ron said diffidently, though he noticed that she had _that_ look again. As if he didn't have have enough to worry about. "Anyway... so it'll be your team on rifles, and my guys on rockets. K- Senior Chief? Anything for you?"

"Actually," she admitted, "if Lieutenant del Cielo will allow, I wouldn't mind trading this," she gestured at her assault rifle, "for one of the SRS99Cs."

"We would be honored to have you shoot with us, Senior Chief," Yori said. "I, personally, have heard many stories of the... versatility of the SPARTANS," she continued as she reached into one of the pods and pulled out a sniper rilfe. She handed it to Kim and said, "I look forward to seeing if more of them are true."

"Well," Kim said as she took the rifle from Yori, "I'll try to give you a good show, then. But if you wanted a marksmanship display," - she checked the action and the chamber, and found them both satisfactory - "then you should probably know that I'm only the third best SPARTAN sniper."

"Only the third?"

"Yes." She slung the rifle over her back and accepted the magazines that Yori passed her. "I've only _tripled_ Hathcock's record."

"And she's good with a sword, too," Ron whispered. No matter what else had happened during her training, becoming a SPARTAN had obviously _not_ drained away Kim's natural confidence. He still wasn't entirely sure what _else_ it had done, and he certainly still wasn't all that thrilled about her being a SPARTAN in the first place (aside from, of course, the fact that she wasn't dead after all), but-

_'But I can't worry about that just now. Like you said KP, I need to keep my head in the game; that's what your doing, that's what you'd expect_ me_ to do, so...'_

"Well, then," he said aloud. "Murphy!"

"Sir!" the j.g. said, coming to attention.

"Setttle down, kid," Ron grinned. "Lieutenant, divide up the men, half to launchers, half to ammo. See who's best at seat-of-the-pants navigation, gunnery shoots, that sort of thing. When we reach the outpost, follow Lieutenant del Cielo's lead. If she tells you to blow something up, you ask one missile or two, got it?"

"Yes sir!"

"Commander-" Yori began quietly.

"I haven't done anything like this in awhile, Yori," Ron said equally quietly, surprising them both by using her given name. "So I'll bet you know more about this than I do."

"I- very well, Commander. But if you, or the Senior Chief, would have any recommendations..."

"Oh, we'll give them," Ron said. Kim just nodded. Then he turned back to the ambling crowd and raised his voice. "All right, you! We don't have all day, so let's get this firepower passed around.

"We've got Covies to kill."

_That_ set them to it with a great deal of enthusiasm. Cheerful insults filled the air as the Marines and Navy crewmen, coordinated by Yori's platoon sergeant, broke open the rest of the ammo pods and passed around the rockets and rifle ammo. Most had joined to fight the Covenant in one way or another, and they _all_ believed Ron's promise that they were about to get some.

Wade passed on what information he'd gathered about the outpost from his hacks of the Covenant battle-net. As best he could tell, all that was left of the garrison for that particular outpost was two Hunters, a handful of Elites (read: likely no more than five, but someone hadn't kept up with bookkeeping, so maybe more), four Shade plasma turrets arrayed on the roof of the outpost, the Covenant transport which was the actual target, five Banshee atmospheric fighters that might or might not be manned, seven Ghosts under the same conditionals as the fighters, and one Wraith tank.

All after a three, four kilometer hike.

Funner and funner.

But the plan, ad hoc as it might be, quickly came together, and the rag-tag group of Marines and Navy crewmen, now loaded up with as much ammo as they could carry, set out towards the Covenant outpost.

* * *

"I love it when a plan comes together," Barkin murmured as he surveyed the battlements. His lead engineers, Bubba, Verne, Ernest, and Daryl (none of whom, due to an incident involving a Major General, five chickens, and an impressive ballistic arc, were allowed to use antimatter), had finished digging out the tank and 'hog emplacements in about half the time he'd alloted, and the earthworks were finished soon after. Now the final pair of tanks were settling into place, his forward platoons were digging in, and Barkin himself was awaiting work from the recon forces and trying very hard to project a Betty Director level of calm.

Which was hard, as he was not naturally a calm man, and tended to get antsy waiting on other people.

Especially waiting on people he'd sent into harm's way.

Some pacing, therefore, was inevitable.

He had sixteen Warthogs in the field, in teams of two, each team scouting along a thirty-three degree arc from the end of the road. They were his eyes and ears, and while Barkin hoped they wouldn't find anything, he knew that if anything was coming as him from the ground, he wanted to know about it well before the enemy reached the foot of the mountain.

The part of the reconnaissance mission that really hurt, though, was that he'd elected to send off his three gunships. He needed someone to go round up the lost Pelicans, and given the narrow confines of his impromptu mountain base the gunships were a better fit for that role than they would have been slotted into the defense. At least the mountain gave him a commanding view of the terrain, and that his own sensors would let him know if something came from the air.

It still hurt. And they hadn't checked in for a while. And-

"Colonel," called out Tech Sergeant Alicia O'Casey, head of his commo detachment. "Incoming call from Lady Death. She reports that they've encountered three of the surviving Pelicans. However, two of them are damaged. She has elected to release Griffin Queen to guard the Pelicans, while she and Dragon Lady continue the search."

Barkin tried very hard not to roll his eyes at the names for his gunship pilots. Lady Death was more properly called First Lieutenant Hartlage. Said so right there on her uniform. But, given how she'd elected to paint her bird, no one called her anything but Lady Death, save on official paperwork. Even then, well, typos happened.

"Inform Lieutenant Hartlage that I concur."

He, at least, made it a point to use her rank and name. If nothing else it meant that he'd actually noticed her name, given both the nickname _and_ that the uniform name tag lies just over the left breast, and most didn't really notice the name on first glance, since the Lieutenant was _very_ well, um, blessed in that-

Well. He switched off _that _line of thought real quick, seeing as how 'exploring' that impulse was what got in him trouble with the Corps the _first_ time he'd been a Marine.

The Lieutenant may or may not have minded ogling; officially, the regs didn't mind either. Regs, however, _did_ frown on anything further than ogling someone within the same chain of command.

But that was beside the point.

"Any word from the scouts?" he asked.

"Nothing important, sir," O'Casey answered. "Not even much wildlife. Just a bunch of rocks and grass and trees. And something that looks, quote, almost but not entirely unlike a four-foot june bug."

"Just let me know if they run into anything_ bad."_

"Of course, sir. Bad. I-" she stopped, eyes narrowing, and pressed a hand up against her headset. Then she took the headset off and passed it to Barkin.

"Call for you. Lieutenant Makarov's patrol."

He took the headset from O'Casey and placed it on his head. The sounds of what was clearly a running battle came through the speakers.

"Dog Ear Four, Mad Dog Actual. Report."

"_Mad Dog Actual, we have encountered Covenant patrol," _said the second lieutenant. _"Ran straight into them, took out three of Jackals with bumper. Anders had good laugh, then saw rest of Jackals. Current – Anders! Ty chto mumu yebyosh! Turn gun and engage! - enemy strength is three-seven Jackals with five Elites in command and support. We are attempting withdrawal."_

"Can you attempt to draw them away from this position?"

"_Negative, Colonel. Enemy can follow old tracks."_

Barking figured that he meant the tracks from the mountain to when Vlad encountered the enemy. Which was likely enough.

"Never mind, Dog Ear Four. Get your team back here."

"_I will attempt, Actual. Four out."_

The Lieutenant signed off, and Barkin returned the headset to O'Casey.

"Alicia," he ordered a moment later, "signal Lieutenants Engelschild and Ben-Roi. Instruct them to swing around and support Makarov, then call back the rest of the patrols, tell them to return to base as best possible, route at their discretion. Also, signal La- Lieutenant Hartlage. Tell her to continue with the search, but to use wherever it was they left Lieutenant Corsetti as a gathering point. Tell her to... gather up the prodigals until I signal other wise, then to get as many of the ships back her as she can and land the Marines _behind_ the Covenant. Understand all that, Sergeant?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good girl. Get to it. Smaj!" Barkin called out, having seen Sib Rawat, the Sergeant Major, ambling about around the commo area. The Ghurka sergeant, battle rifle in hand, honest-to-Shiva kukri at his waist, and cigar dangling from his mouth, switch from a random amble to an amble aimed somewhat in Colonel Barkin's general direction.

"Trouble, Colonel?" he asked.

"Get the men ready, Sib. We've got incoming."

"How bad, sir?"

"Vlad's stopped using definite articles again."

"Oh. Shit."

"Yeah. This is gonna suck."

* * *

The situation sucked.

The first ripple from the Archer missiles reached out and swatted the quartet of Wraiths that led the charge into the canyon. The resulting wreckage partially blocked the pass, and forced the Covenant infantry to break formation and go around. Forty millimeter round tore the leakers apart, adding further to the plug, while additional Archer missiles blasted holes in the enemy within the pass and out beyond the mountain. But it liked like every single Covenant soldier on Thebes was charging at the _Heart of Sword_, and the plug couldn't last forever.

Nor did it. A single Archer locked onto an enemy Ghost, and tracked down upon the small vehicle... as the Elite piloting the Ghost attempted to force his way between the wrecked Wraiths.

The resulting explosion destroyed the Ghost, and killed the pilot along with whoever else was in the general area... but it also blew aside the middle two Wraiths, killing whoever they landed on, and knocked the other two further apart.

The pass was open.

"Dammit," Carlos growled, and Betty looked up from her own tactical board.

"You're doing fine, Guns. Just keep it coming."

He growled a bit and shifted the guns, drawing a line between the ship and the horde with Covenant dead. It would be a while yet before the armory had the refitted Archers ready, so they had to hold until then.

She didn't bother telling anyone. They already knew.

An Elite and a team of Grunts got through the line, an inside of the _Sword's_ range. A loud KA-BAM reverberated through the bridge as the helmsman dropped the Elite with a well-timed shot.

"_Axes flash, broadswords swing_," he hummed as he shifted aim to one of the retreating Grunts. "_Shining armor's-_" KA-BAM "-_piercing ring_."

"_Horses run with polished shield_," Carlos sang quietly, taking up the verse. "_Fight those bastards till they yield_."

"_Midnight mare and blood red roan_," Captain Director finished out, "_fight to keep this land your own. Sound the horn and call the cry-_"

"_HOW MANY OF THEM CAN WE MAKE DIE!_"

* * *

"Think we can kill 'em all?"

It was nearly sundown, and after a brief, heart-stopping interlude where they'd nearly run into a trio of patrolling Elites, where Kim had to sneak up an cut down each of three with her plasma sword (a feat that clearly impressed Yori to no end), they'd finally arrived at the outpost. Rather, at the edge of a ridge overlooking the outpost, but it was close enough for government work and nuclear warheads. Neither of which had any real utility at that particular point in time.

"I believe we can, Commander," Yori answered him quietly. "However, as to question of whether or not we can kill them before they can shoot at us, well, I believe the expression is, 'your guess is as good as mine.'

"Sarge-kun," she continued, turning to her platoon sergeant. "Please arrange the platoon along this ridge. Do your best to maximize line of sight, but do not discount the necessity of a reserve. Tell the men to aim for the Elites first," of which there were fifteen visible, _not_ five, including one Elite in white armor, an Ultra, the clear commander, "and to ignore the Grunts," which were to the Elites in numbers as three is to one, "until their commanders are down. Then engage the Hunters," of which, contrary to expectations, there _were_ only two, "and then the Grunts. Myself and the Chief will take down the Ultra."

"I will do so, _Chu-i_. Shoot well."

"And you, Sarge-kun. Lieutenant Murphy?"

"Yes, ma'am?" the Naval Lieutenant asked, looking somewhat uncertain with the rocket launcher on his shoulder, but ready.

"Murphy-san, I want to two of your men to target each of the Wraiths," since there were two instead of one, "and one person each to target the four Shades," another count that had proven correct. "Have the extra men act as backup on the Wraiths. At my signal, you are to each launch simultaneously."

"Of course, ma'am," he said. Then, a moment later, "One rocket or two, ma'am?"

"Two for each Wraith," she answered with a smile, "but only one for the Shades. When your men are in position, send a double-click over the com so we will know. Do you understand?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Then quickly, Murphy-san, quickly."

He scrambled up the hill back to his men, and fairly stealthily so, the boy was a quick learner, and left Ron, Kim, and Yori alone.

"He is a good man, Commander," Yori said at last. Ron turned away from the spotter scope (he was scanning over the outpost and would spot for Yori during the attack, as Kim's SPARTAN enhancements meant she didn't need a spotter, even with the fading light) and smiled at her.

"Yes, he is."

"Do you or the Chief have any recommendations?"

"None, really," Kim answered for them. "It seems like a good enough plan. Just- you do realize that as soon as those rockets go off, everybody down there is going to start shooting at us."

"Yes. I do not suppose it can be helped."

"Not really. We'll just have to shoot them first."

"Indeed," Yori said, then thought for a moment. A somewhat... mischievous look crossed her face. "Tell me, Senior Chief... since we are shooting at the same target, at least initially... would you care to make a contest of it?"

Ron gaped at her. Kim just looked from her scope, to Yori, then back to the scope, then back to Yori, then back to the scope again.

"Bring it."

"Excellent!"

Ron just shook his head and turned back to the spotter scope. Here they were, about to go into battle, and Kim and Yori were making bets! He didn't think SPARTAN did that sort of thing. But even as a girl Kim had always had her pride. Looked like even SPARTAN training couldn't get rid of that... not, he thought on further reflection, that it likely wanted to. Pride, for an elite supersoldier, was probably a good thing.

Probably.

He shook his head and turned back to the scope. One of the Ninja Monkeys' spotters had given him some really brief instruction on the way over, but he thought he had the basic idea. Find target, give Yori distance and bearing, confirm the kill, then rinse and repeat. But that would be during the battle.

Once again he confirmed that, for some odd reason, none of the Elites were in the Ghosts or Banshees. Two of the red armored Elites, who didn't seem to have a team of blue armored Elites (and assorted Grunts) attached, were milling about in the general area of the Ghosts, but that was it. He found himself wondering if any of the crewmen knew how to use Covenant vehicles.

He leaned forward a bit more, trying to get a better view of the outpost and a good count of the vehicles. One lander, what they'd come for, but also _eight_ Banshees and half again as many Ghosts.

A double-click came over the com. Good, Murphy and his team were ready, which meant-

_Crack-rattle-rattle-rattle-_

The ground shifted, and the rock he'd leaned on gave way and dumped him down the ridge. The scope smashed into pieces on a rock, and Ron bounced off of two others, raising up such a ruckus and cloud of dust that there was no way any of the Covenant could miss him, and finally coming to rest, knocked cold and sprawled out, at the base of the ridge.

Two things happened on Ron's way down. The first was that he drew the eye (and aim) of every single Covenant warrior at the outpost. Their fire followed him all the way down... but neither hit him nor came close to Yori and Kim's position.

The second was that two frag grenades came loose from Ron's belt, struck a pair of oddly shaped rocks, bounced off in two wildly divergent directions, and lost their pins. The resulting explosions didn't kill anybody... but every single warrior save one Elite, the Ultra, was caught looking at Ron or one of the explosions: everywhere, in fact, _except_ for the top of the ridge.

The fist inkling any of them had about rockets or snipers was when the Wraiths and Shades exploded, and the Ultra Elite fell from the simultaneous impact of two 14.5mm Armor Piercing, Fin Stabilized, Discarding Sabot rounds.

* * *

"Tango Ten, Zulu Seven," Barkin whispered into his tactical com. While he had a commo section for long-distance and strategic contact, an actual battle required a bit more of a personal touch.

Besides, there wasn't enough room there at the battlements for the platoons _and_ the commo section.

But the personal touch would help.

In this case, he'd just asked tank Ten if it could engage the target at the seventh zig in the road. That particular zig wasn't in Ten's area of responsibility, but he _was_ the closest tank there, and the target was a particularly juicy one.

An Ultra Elite, likely the commander of this little expedition (which seemed to have grown quite a bit from thirty-seven Jackals and attached Elites), who with his escort retinue, a gaggle of Jackals and red armored Elites, was following up behind a pair of Wraiths which were just about to enter into the kill box.

"_Barely, Mad Dog,"_ Ten responded.

The Covenant hadn't engaged yet. Given that it was the local equivalent of nautical twilight and he had cammo netting over the tanks and 'hogs, that wasn't surprising.

"Roger, Ten. Hold until boxed."

Inch by inch the Wraiths crept up the road, their progress impeded by the zig-zags and the bordering rocks and trees. Infantry units were mixed in amongst the Wraiths; the rocket 'hogs prioritized to those. Up behind the Ultra came another Wraith, and behind that a Shadow armored personnel carrier. Further still, as best the binoculars could tell, was a lot of Covenant infantry.

But good grief, they were moving slowly! He wanted to draw as much of the enemy as possible into the trap and then spring it, but if they didn't hurry up-

"_Whiskey one, box."_

"_Whiskey two, box."_

"_Uniform Echo, box"_

"_Whiskey three, box."_

"_Sierra, box."_

Barkin nodded to himself and tapped the com link once. He wanted this go out to the Regiment in its entirety.

"All right, boys. God be your sword. Engage."

A pair of 90mm HE shells impacted dead-on with each Wraith and the Shadow, ripping them apart in a fiery blast. The shells from tanks Five and Six, along with a three-shot ripple from their attached rocket 'hog, impacted on the Ultra Elite and retinue; what was left of the Ultra soared a good seven meters into the air and flew a fairly impressive ballistic arc into a nearby tree. The rocket 'hogs attached to tanks One through Four and Seven through Ten rippled their shots into the infantry which had walked amongst the Wraiths and the Shadow; their were assisted in the slaughter by the 7.62mm coax cannons on the tanks and the M41 chainguns on the regular 'hogs.

The Spanker teams, seeing little chance for targets, held back; there would be enough for them in the second wave.

In the span of three seconds every single warrior in the Covenant vanguard had been killed, and the fires of their death lit the darkening sky.

But more came, up over and around the burning wreckage, some trying to shove the wrecks aside but most just bypassing them. These were infantry, Grunts and Jackals and Elites, and even with the wrecks they could move up the road a lot faster than a Wraith. Most were stopped, killed by shell and by rocket and by bullet... but some got through.

Barkin flipped the safety off of his shotgun and rose up over the edge. The rest of the platoons followed suite.

"_Grenades!_"

A quartet of frag grenades arced over the battlements in response to Barkin's order, and landed amongst the enemy survivors. What little were left after the explosions seemed frozen in place.

"_Open fire!_"

* * *

"How long until we can fire?" Betty asked as another deep boom reverberated through the ship. _Four_ Hunters had gotten past the fire line, and were bombarding the hull with their arm-cannons. They were proving most difficult for the defenders to hit, especially given everything _else_ they had to shoot at.

"Just a few more minutes, Skipper," DeLong answered. "The armory-" another boom, but this one came from the helmsman's rifle, "-had to toss out a couple of the Furies as duds. It slowed them down a bit." Then, quieter, "We're running out of ammo."

"I know. Just-"

KA-BAM!

"_Yee-heh! Cap!_"

"What is it, Eric?" Betty asked the excited helmsman.

"Cap, we just got the guy in the gold armor! That's the head dude!"

"Then go for the ones in white!" Carlos admonished. Eric just grinned at him and turned back to shooting. Carlos shook his head and turned back to Captain Director, looking a bit abashed.

"Sorry, Skipper."

"No trouble, Carlos," she said evenly. "Still, if he _did_ get the enemy general..."

"He probably did," DeLong said, pointing to the tac readout. "See? Their attack is coming loose. So if he can kept disrupting the chain of command..."

"Then Eric's bought us some time."

"As much as it pains me to say it, yes."

Eric blew a raspberry out the window, but it was clearly directed, in spirit at least, towards Lieutenant DeLong. Carlos glared at him and then turned back to the battle.

"So," Betty asked after a while, "did we figure out where those transports airlifted to?"

"Communications picked up on something about another battle going on north of here, Skipper. No details."

"Probably Steve," Betty announced.

"I'd say the XO, myself."

"Nah, I don't see Ron getting in the middle of something like that."

* * *

Even for Kim, the start of the battle was a bit of a blur. One moment she was hearing Lieutenant del Cielo give the order to execute... and then Ron fell over the side of the cliff, and landed, if not in the middle of the enemy, then far to close for her comfort.

And why _that_ should be the case, she still had no idea. Her family, and friends, were the SPARTANS. For Kim-487, there wasn't _supposed_ to be anybody else.

_'But you wanted to see him again.'_

Even while Ron fell and rockets blazed forth overhead, she sighted down her scope on the Ultra Elite, and felt more so than heard Lieutenant del Cielo do the same. She held back a bit, letting the Lieutenant zero in... and then she fired. Kim didn't bother watching the bullets track in, but started to shift aim to another target – Elite, blue – almost as soon as the bullet exited the barrel.

_'I wanted a lot of things. But that was before the changes.'_

It wasn't until she racked in her third magazine that Kim realized that her shots, along with Lieutenant del Cielo's, were targeted primarily as cover fire for Ron.

She felled another Elite, and then another, and then a shot took two Grunts at once, and the last shot from that magazine skitted off of-

Off of the armor of one of the pair of Hunters, who were still alive and charging directly at Ron.

She sighted again on one of the Hunters, trying to find a one of the gaps in the armor, to hit the vulnerable orange flesh of the neck or midsection, but the angle was wrong and its shield was in the way-

"Chief-san!" Lieutenant del Cielo called out. "The one on the right! Go for the neck, I will fire first."

Kim shifted her aim to the designated Hunter, and Lieutenant del Cielo waited for no further acknowledgment. She triggered off a single round, which struck the Hunter on the top of its armored head. The shot bounced off the armor, but transferred just enough energy and momentum to snap back the Hunter's head, baring its vulnerable throat.

At that sudden flash of orange flesh, Kim took the shot. The bullet entered the Hunter in a splash of orange ichor... and then the Hunter fell.

But there was a second Hunter, and it was almost upon Ron. She shifted aim towards it, knowing even as she did so that she would not be able to shoot in time.

* * *

Tanks Nine and Ten burned. The Covenant forces had a Wraith set up at the base of the mountain, and somehow or another had figured out the angles to lob plasma charges up into the human lines. They were inaccurate as hell, but a couple of shots had gotten lucky... including one that landed right on top of Nine and Ten during an ammo replenishment.

Almost as bad, Tanks Two and Five were immobile with broken tracks, having taken a few shots from a Hunter the wrong way. The crews were still firing, however, but those tanks were stuck in place and unable to maneuver.

Not that Barkin himself was in any better shape. Well, he was in a little better shape, given how he had the whole length of the battlements to stalk up and down while he encouraged the men and added weight of fire wherever it was needed. His bait hadn't taken the casualties he'd feared, but they were taking enough, and-

An Elite jumped the battlement and roared something. Barkin whirled around and filled it full of buckshot.

Damn but he wished Makarov and the scouts had returned. The local 'hogs had performed gallantly and mostly died valiantly. What few remained were darting around the remaining tanks, trying to engage the still-coming Covenant column while not getting blown up themselves.

At least he knew, now, where those forces had come from. Alicia had intercepted a Covenant message, and finally translated it, asking for a certain count of forces to be detached from a battle with a crashed human ship and transported up to his position.

Not that that bit of intelligence _helped_ him any, except that the inference that Captain Director was still alive and kicking took one worry off of his shoulders.

Another weight fell off when he passed orders on to Lady Death to get herself back there and take out that Wraith. It would be awhile, of course, but it was always a good thing to know that air support was inbound.

"I think that's the last of that, Colonel," Sib announced. Gingerly he slid another magazine into his pistol, and racked the slide; his left arm was weak and bandaged, the end result of a brief encounter with a Jackal and a plasma pistol.

"For this wave, at least," Barkin growled. "Everybody, check ammo!"

"At least they're committed to the offensive."

"Yeah, right," Barkin agreed as he re-loaded the shotgun. The clicks of shells sliding into the magazine were strangely therapeutic.

"Should we start to pull back?"

"Maybe. How's everybody for ammo?"

"Two clips. At most three, and some of the boys are picking up Covenant weapons and firing back with them."

"Dammit. Alright people, listen up! Next attack we hit hard and fast, then we start falling back into the ruins. Plan Bravo. Understood?"

"_Hoo-rah!"_

"Comments?"

"_Ammunition?"_ the acting First Platoon CO, Staff Sergeant Leo Weissman, asked over the com. His Lieutenant had taken a needler round to head two charges back, and First had been hit the hardest of the three 'bait' platoons, and would also be the first to pull out the battlements and fall back.

"Manage your ammo, but kept in mind that we've got dumps set up," Barkin replied. "It would suck to run out of ammo on the pull-back, but if you don't mind me mis-quoting a Naval officer, no one ever did wrong by firing on the enemy."

Everyone agreed with _that_ sentiment, even Lieutenant Eleanor Fourier, Second Platoon CO, who was by no means a fan of Horatio Nelson.

"They're coming again, Colonel," Sib announced calmly. As if to confirm his statement a series of plasma shots impacted on the battlements, just below his head. He ducked back behind the earthworks and shook off a few bits and pieces of dirt.

"Prepare to volley grenades," Barkin ordered. "One salvo, then fall back by platoon and fire."

_'Alright, you sons of bitches,' _Barkin thought towards the Covenant warriors. _'You want me and my boys? Just few more meters, and you can come and get-'_

"_Colonel!_" someone shouted, he wasn't sure who, it sounded like one of the new privates. "_Flare, five o'clock!_"

He whirled about and caught sight of the red signal flare soaring skyward above one of the rearmost buildings. That wasn't supposed-

"Sergeant MacKenzie," he yelled into his com, "report!"

Nothing.

"Sergeant MacKenzie! Dammit, Third Platoon, Able Company, what the _hell_ is going on out there?"

"_Sir, this is Corporal Ellis,"_ came a young, very scared voice over the com. _"Sir, I don't- we've lost contact with the Captain, sir, and the Lieutenant. I think they're- sir, they just came out of nowhere!"_

"Settle down, son," Barkin said, attempting to soothe the youngster. Ellis was normally a good troop, even if a bit green. "What came out of nowhere?"

"_Elites, sir! At least a dozen. Must have come in under stealth, over the mountains, and- oh no. Brian, there in the corner, the distortion. No, _right_ corner, fire at it-"_

The whisper of an activating plasma sword drifted in over the com.

"_Oh God-"_

* * *

_'They're coming in too fast,'_ Betty thought to herself as she surveyed the tactical plot. The pain in her body had started picking up a few minutes prior and was slowly getting worse. But she would not slump – dammit, she_ would not_ slump! 'We're_ killing them as best we can, but too many are getting through, and we don't have the firepower to hold them off forev-'_

"Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee," she heard Carlos whisper. Then, louder, "Skipper, we're up! Blessed are thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus..."

A fierce exultation filled her. They'd done it, they'd held just long enough, and now-

"Show them _hell_, Guns."

"Holy Mary, mother of God, – loading missiles – pray for us sinners, – loaded – now and at the hour of our death – away!"

Six Archer missiles, each bearing a single Fury tactical nuclear warhead, rippled out from the _Heart of Sword_. Three were alloted to each of the mountains that defined the pass; all the missiles struck home, pierced the rock, and penetrated deep into the heart of the mountains. For a moment, for a heartbeat, there was nothing.

Then there was a roar, like the muffled dying a world, and a great shower of rock and dust shot out from the mountains. That shrapnel did damage enough to the Covenant forces, but what followed was worse. As Goliath before David, or the Idol of Dagon before the Ark of the Lord, the top of the mountains sheared off and fell down into the pass, crushing the Covenant army in their ruin, and sealing the pass and the canyon from any further ground attack.

Almost as an afterthought Carlos lobbed another pair of missiles, again tipped with Fury warheads, over the mountains to the other side. Just in case.

"Amen," he intoned gravely, wonderingly, after the sounds of falling rock and nuclear fire faded away into a strange sort of quiet. There were still plenty of Covenant in the canyon, but-

Not enough. Nowhere _near_ enough, and Betty closed her eyes and let herself relax. _Not_ slump. However much the pain in her torso made her want to.

"Guns," she said at last, quietly but over the steady, fading sounds of battle. "Status."

"Mopping up, Skipper."

She smiled.

"Well done, Guns."

Then she collapsed like a broken toy.

* * *

He lay on the ground like a busted action figure, aching all over and not quite certain of where he was or what he was doing. Fortunately, after a brief status check, Ron determined that he _didn't_ have any broken bones. Maybe a bruised rib or five, but that didn't count. He hoped. After all, there was a battle-

Oh, yeah. _That_ was where he was. He rolled over a bit, lifted up his head and opened his eyes-

Just in time to see a pair of Hunters rushing right at him.

Orange-fleshed behemoths covered in blue armor, ship-hull shields on their left arms, and with plasma cannons in place of right hands were _not_ what he wanted to wake up to.

Before he could move two shots in rapid succession struck the right-most Hunter, and it fell in a spray of orange blood. The Hunter on the left roared in anger and spread out its arms in punctuation.

In that instant, without thought, Ron drew his pistol and put a single round into the Hunter's suddenly exposed belly.

With a terrible crash the Hunter fell to the ground, dead.

Ron looked at the Hunter.

He looked back at his sidearm.

He looked back at the Hunter.

He looked back at his sidearm.

"I don't whether this is a 'boo-yah'," he muttered, "or a 'sick and wrong'."

Then he looked around and noticed that there were a lot of dead Covenant lying around... and, apparently, not live ones.

"Check that," he said as he processed that and heard and a scraping sound from the ridge behind him. "This is _definitely_ a 'boo-yah' moment."

More scraping noises. Then he felt a now-familiar somehow standing over him, armored hand held out.

"Commander?"

"I'm alright, Chief," he said quietly, sitting up and reaching out to clasp her hand. This time he let her haul him to his feet, despite the fact that the rest of his little team was in view and making their own way down to the outpost. She levered him up far more gently than he would have guessed, but he winced even so, as something moved the wrong way in his chest.

"Commander, are you-"

"I said I'm fine, KP," he said, again quietly but now firmly, and looked her straight in the visor. "Just took a bump or two on the way down, nothing worry about."

He looked around, surveying the carnage, and finally turned his attention back to the two Hunters.

"So, who got that one?"

"I took the shot," Kim answered, "but Lieutenant del Cielo set it up for me."

"She did?"

"She did," Kim confirmed as Yori walked up to them. She met Ron's eye and then bowed.

"Commander," she said, "I am very glad to see you alive."

"I'm... pretty glad about it myself. I hear I have both of you to thank for that."

"Honor required nothing else," she told him. "Twice now you have saved my life, and that of my platoon."

"Twice?"

"Of course," she said with a twinkle in her eye and a ringing mischief in her voice. "The Covenant were so busy shooting at _you_, just now, that _we_ were able to engage without losses."

"Umm... you're welcome?" he said. She smiled, and he continued, "Aside from losses, what's our status?"

"My men are- wait," she said, her hand going to her earpiece. She listened for a moment, and then stepped back and bowed low and formally.

"Commander Stoppable, I beg leave to report that we have captured the Covenant outpost."

* * *

Steve Barkin had never really liked the Spartans. There was just too much about their culture that, quite frankly, he found to be sick and wrong. The word _helot_, for example, and all that implied, as well as the age at which Spartan boys entered the _agoge_.

But for all that, he had to admit that there was a lot that the ancient Spartans had gotten right. 'Come and get them,' for example, as well as the quality of their soldiers and officers, the way Leonidas of legend and glory had led his men into battle. Hell, the Battle of Thermopylae in entirety was something that they'd gotten _very_ right.

Still, though, as he stood his ground in a ruined, ancient building with what remained of First, Second, and Headquarters platoons, and traded shots with the swarming Covenant outside, he figured that Thermopylae might not be the most... encouraging of historical examples to consider.

The Alamo was certainly more pertinent, given the location.

But he was hoping for Bastogne, all things considered. At least there the 101st managed a breakout, 3rd Army involvement or no.

Still, it looked like the Alamo.

What he'd meant as a firesack had turned into a giant game of dance the Charlie Foxtrot. The sudden, surprise Elite raid had taken out enough of his officers to totally scramble the chain of command: about half of his platoon commanders were still up and moving and talking with him, but all three of his Company commanders were dead and so were two of the First Sergeants. Most of the platoons without Lieutenants were also without platoon sergeants, and so were operating on the squad level or lower.

But they were still operating. He could tell not so much by com chatter but by the relentless noise of close-quarters combat. The screams of men, chatter of guns, and impact of rifle butts on flesh had their own rhythm and flow, a perverse symphony that told him the 24th Marine Infantry Regiment was still in the fight, however scrambled.

He hadn't wanted to pull back and let the oncoming Covenant forces into the mix, but whoever was in command down there had coordinated the attacks well, and the enemy had pushed him back by sheer weight of numbers.

But there were fewer numbers than might have been, as the enemy hadn't cut through to the tanks and 'hogs yet. They continued pouring fire into the oncoming column, thinning it out for the infantry.

Then two very good things happened.

A single Pelican came screaming out of the moon, fire reaching out towards the ground from her wings and nose, as she poured gunfire and rockets into the enemy. Upon the sides of that Pelican was painted a ghastly revenant, born up upon wings of charcoal, clad in a robe of smoke, and clutching in bony hands a scythe with a blade of silver and black water-rippled Damascus steel, Lady Death come with vengeance to smite the killers of her boys.

Her first kill was the Wraith that had continued to pour fire into the tanks.

Upon the com came a call from Lady Death. She reported seeing, at the base of the mountain, some sixteen M12 Warthogs, Lieutenant Makarov and the scouts returned at last, arrayed in line and charging down upon the Covenant reserve. They met the enemy with all the force and glory of knights upon horseback; and they ground the enemy to dust beneath their tires.

But even the good things were of limit, for even though the incoming Covenant forces trickled into a pittance and then faded away altogether, there were still more than enough already amongst the ruins. Not enough, perhaps, to kill all of his men, but enough to gut the Regiment.

Lady Death could not fire upon those enemies, least she risk firing upon her own men, and the scouts could not get up the debris and body filled road in time.

So that was it.

Alamo.

Thermopylae.

"Well, Mike," he heard one of the privates say to another private, "I'll guess I'll see you in Hell."

"Oh, _bullshit!_" Barkin snapped, now really pissed off. Not at the private, not even at the sentiment, but at the whole entirety of the situation. So he and his Regiment were trapped, their backs up against the wall?

That is where a Mad Dog is the most dangerous.

"Sir?"

"You think they're gonna find us in Hell, Marine? Not a chance of that."

Shock attack. They enemy was in them, amongst them, confident. But his men still had fight in them.

"Sir, I-"

"Marine, where are they gonna find us?" he growled. None answered, and he growled again, "Nobody knows? Apes don't know history, I guess, but you aren't apes; you're _men_, dammit, so look to your history and tell me _where are they gonna find us_?"

Charge them, smash them, break their bones. Only way to win now is to surprise the enemy, do something unexpected.

Still no answer.

"The old United States, boys, remember the _song_. Now, _where are they gonna find us_?"

The Sergeant Major, most of the other sergeants, a few of the corporals, and some of the privates, looked thoughtful.

"Guarding Heaven's streets, sir?" one of the privates ventured.

"Exactly. Marines, _where are they gonna find us_?"

"Guarding Heaven's streets, sir!"

"I cannot hear you! _Where are they gonna find us?_"

"_Guarding Heaven's streets, sir!_"

"Put some _passion_ into it, boys! _Where are they gonna find us?_"

When a Mad Dog has its back up against a wall, there is no telling what it will do.

"_GUARDING HEAVEN'S STREETS, SIR!_"

"Damn straight! _Out and into 'em, Marines!_"

He set the example, always in the front, and charged out of their hiding place... straight into the arms of a waiting Hunter. But he did not fear, he did not falter. Barkin changed his grip on his shotgun and slammed the butt into the Hunter's chin. The shear temerity of the act surprised the creature long enough for Barkin to turn the gun back around and pump and single shell into the Hunter's exposed neck, severing its head.

He loaded another shell as he stepped past the falling behemoth. A hip shot felled two Grunts, and then he replaced the shell. His men were following after him, attacking as they saw fit, screaming and yelling as temperament led them, firing into the enemy and following their Colonel's charge. Other fireteams, other squads, other platoons, trapped in nearby buildings saw the commotion and rushed out to join, many getting shot down by Covenant weapons, but most surviving, engaging, fighting.

For Barkin the battle turned into a waltz of run, shoot, reloaded, each shot hitting a target, each shot replaced by a fresh shell. They were-

A shot from a Hunter's cannon impacted behind him, and Barkin was thrown through the air and bounced roughly off a pock-marked rock wall. He shook his head and looked up, and couldn't see any humans but plenty of Covenant, and there was even an enemy transport coming in, escorted by a quartet of Banshees, and why was Lieutenant Hartlage vectoring _away_-

Then the transport came lower, barely three meters above the ground, and the doors opened, there was Lieutenant Yori del Cielo and some of her platoon, hanging out the doors with rifles in hand and firing into the enemy. The tuning-fork shaped transport's turret was firing as well, but the strangest sight-

From the starboard pod dropped a SPARTAN, Covenant plasma sword in hand. She fell towards the Elite leading the group attacking him, and Barkin watched as she, in midair, snicked away its head with the barest swipe of her blade. She landed and wasted not a moment, grabbing the Elite's fallen head in her right hand and flinging it into a trio of Grunts, bowling them over; in the same motion she stabbed out with her left hand, and impaled another Elite upon her sword. She withdrew the blade, and on the backswing cleaved through a Hunter's shield and sliced the alien itself cleanly in half.

There was a lot, he'd always thought, that was sick and wrong about the new SPARTANS.

But maybe these new children of the _agoge_ had managed to do something right, as well.

In a short while, it was quiet again upon the mountaintop.

* * *

Twelve hours later, with the sun in the sky, they readied to move out. Ron found himself walking towards the command tank, rather than towards the Covenant lander. His role in the upcoming attack was an important one, but it could wait a bit. Everything could wait a bit.

_This world is part of the personal fiefdom of a Covenant Prophet, who goes by the title Low Prophet of Flesh_.

So Wade had told them in council of war. That much, along with the exact location and nature of their target, he had gleaned from hacking the Covenant battle-net. It was a storage and research facility, used by the Low Prophet of Flesh... and was _not _of Covenant manufacture.

But it _was_ what they had come to destroy.

_There remains some six hundred enemy troops at the primary base. Two hundred patrol the grounds at any one time; the remainder are in reserve. All of the rest are dead, either here on in battle with Captain Director_.

He hoped, prayed, that she was all right. He knew that Mr. B. was just as worried; he could see it in the man's eyes.

_A squadron of Banshees hold the airspace, and the ground forces are supported by multiple Shade emplacements and Wraiths._

The battle in space had reduced the 24th MIR from six companies to three. Each company had consisted of two hundred men, not counting the attached armor and scout sections, nor Yori's platoon. The battle on the mountain had cost Steve one-third of his men, as well as a fifth of his tanks, all of his rocket 'hogs, and a quarter of his regular 'hogs.

But all twelve lost Pelicans, or at lest their crews, passengers, and cargo, were recovered, and few of the other Pelicans were damaged. Lady Death, Dragon Lady, and Griffin Queen remained flying as well, and enough Naval personnel had been recovered (at Ron's stubborn insistence) to make up for the numbers.

Several of those Navy men, however, would fly the captured Banshees, and pilot the captured Ghosts. It turned out that one of the Electronics Chiefs on _Heart of Sword _had cannibalized parts from several of the games in the rec area and had assembled a surprisingly accurate simulator for Covenant vehicles. It turned out that a lot of the crewmen liked to pass what free time they had flying around in Banshees and Ghosts, pretending to be a SPARTAN caught behind enemy lines.

Unfortunately, the Chief had used parts from the _Zombie Mayhem_ console to construct that simulator, so Ron was torn as to whether he should congratulate the Chief or read him the riot act.

He reached the command tank, shuddered a bit at the sight of the skeletonized Elite, and climbed up towards the cockpit.

"What did you say to him?"

Kim turned from some status board or another and looked at him.

"What did I say to who?"

"To Colonel Barkin!"

"What about?"

"About getting in this tank. I mean, he-"

"You and Lieutenant del Cielo vouched for me, Commander. I guess that was enough."

"I saw you two go off and discuss something. You're not going to tell me, are you?"

She cranked up the engine in reply. Ron just shook his head, then reached out and grabbed her shoulder.

"KP, we really need to talk."

"I know," she said, surprising him. "Just not now."

"I know," he echoed. "I didn't mean now. Later, once we're done."

"Okay."

He leaned there for a moment, watching, and then he gently whacked her on the back of the helmet.

"Kick some Covenant ass, you hear me?"

"You do the same, Commander."

Ron nodded and stepped off the tank, and started to walk away. Before he got far, she surprised him again.

"Ron?"

He turned. Something about her voice...

"KP?"

"Be careful."

"You too."

They saluted, and Ron headed back to the transport. One the crewmen waited in the turret, while Yori and a selection from her platoon loaded up in the drop bays, readying to spring their trap.

He was just strapping into the cockpit when someone came over the com, praying:

"Dear Lord, today we have met our enemies in a great battle, and have emerged victorious, but at a heavy cost. For our fallen brothers and sisters, dear God, we ask your grace and mercy upon them, that You might speed them forth to places of eternal rest.

"For us who remain, we thank You that You have allowed us life, and have granted us victory. We pray that blessin' upon us again today, oh Lord, that Your spirit might move before us and beside us and behind us, even as it did in the days of Israel and the campaigns of Joshua. Grant us the will to stand and the strength to fight on this day, oh Lord of Hosts, that we might win through a great victory against those who would kill all of humanity in the name of their heathen gods."

He paused a bit, as if to gather steam, and when he continued the last words of the prayer were as a ringing blade drawn forth and shining in the sun.

"And Lord, as for those same enemies, may You have mercy on their souls... 'cause we're goin' Garryowen, and ain't _nothin'_ gettin' in our way!"

**End Chapter 5**


End file.
